The German film industry has proposed fundamental changes to the country’s funding system.
The proposals come as German culture minister Claudia Roth and her BKM ministry prepare for a major revision to Germany’s Film Law (the FFG) which will come into effect from January 2025.
Earlier this year, Roth called for a fundamental reform of Germany’s €370m film funding system, saying that profound changes in the film landscape since the advent of the streamers, declining admissions and too much bureaucracy made far-reaching alterations necessary.
In 2022, around €370m in film subsidies were available to the industry for production. Federal funding for film and TV series was worth a total of €229m through the DFFF (German Federal Film Fund), the GMPF (German Motion Picture Fund) and the FFA (German Federal Film Board), while regional funding was worth €143m.
Producer proposals
In an unprecedented move, the two producers’ associations – the Produzentenallianz and the Produzentenverband – have joined forces together with the documentary filmmakers association AG DOK and the German Film Academy (GFA) to set out their own proposals for reforms to the film funding system.
The producers and the GFA are calling, for example, for the FFG to introduce an automatic incentive of a non-repayable 30% grant on German spend for all fiction and non-fiction programmes plus a “booster” incentive of an additional 5% to honour efforts for more sustainability and diversity in productions. This is inspired by Austria’s new FISA+ and ÖFI+ incentive schemes which were introduced at the beginning of this year and have since triggered a boom in film and TV production.
“We have had some experience of an automatic system with the DFFF and GMPF because that provided us with the last 20% part of the financing which is often the hardest to get together,” Ingo Fliess, producer of this year’s Golden Lola winner The Teachers’ Lounge, said. “But if we were to have a 30% incentive in place at the beginning of a production and without the need to have a contract with a distributor or sales agent, I would become an extremely attractive partner for foreign co-productions.”
Producers say that such an incentive would mean more predictability when embarking on new projects and encourage more innovation and growth opportunities for small and medium-sized production companies.
Producers are also calling for legislation to introduce an investment obligation for streamers, similar to France where platforms have to spend 15-25% of revenue on European or local productions. This would be on top of Germany’s 1.8-2.5% levy on streamers.
In fact, such an investment obligation had already been mentioned in the German government’s SPD/Green/FDP coalition agreement when the new administration came to power in 2021.
“We need an investment obligation in Germany as a contribution by the private sector to give a boost to Germany as a location [for production],” Björn Böhning, managing director of Produzentenallianz, said. He argues that such an initiative would also have to include “clear guidelines on the retention of rights and commissioning productions from independent production companies.”
Distributor and sales agent proposals
Arthouse exhibitor and distributor associations AG Kino and AG Verleih and the German film exporters association VDFE have also issued a position paper outlining their preferred funding models “for the preservation of cultural diversity.”
These include a €20m distribution investment fund to offer automatic funding of at least €50,000 for German documentaries and €100,000 for German fiction films to cover 30% of the costs incurred before a film’s theatrical release. They are also calling for an €8m innovation fund to provide support to distributors. This would be based on a points system determined by factors such as how many German or European films are in their respective line-ups or the number of films with nominations or prizes from the German or European Film Awards
The German sales agents, meanwhile, argued in the position paper that the budget of German Films should be increased. They have also called for stronger representation of German film exporters in committees allocating funding and taking decisions as a way to boost the international circulation of German films.
While minister Roth and her staff at BKM have been open to dialogue with the industry on reforms to the German film funding system, the hotly anticipated draft bill of a new FFG has yet to see the light of day.
“We have done our homework and developed and presented funding models and actually expected to see the draft bill before the summer break,” producer Martin Hagemann of Zero Fiction and board member of AG Dok said.
“We know that it’s a complicated process, but as an industry, we must make a clear demand that the BKM delivers after the summer break because the legislative process must start at the beginning of 2024 if it is going to be law in 2025.”
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