The ICAA will have seven million euros more for film aid | Culture
The Ministry of Culture and Sports has announced that it will transfer an additional 7 million euros from its own budgets to the Fund for the Protection of Cinematography of the Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA) to "reinforce the provision of general and selective aid of feature films ".
With this amount, from the current General Budget, which increases 20% the lines created for production and 10% the total aid (amortization, short films, distribution and participation in festivals), it tries to mitigate -in part- a serious problem : the one of the films that fulfill the requirements excessively and do not receive any counterpart. Currently these grants are awarded according to a scale of points that measure different sections of each film. In 2017, in general aid, there were projects that were left out even exceeding 90 points out of 100, due to lack of money.
In the previous years of the new film financing model, corresponding to 2016 and 2017, the allocation destined to general and selective aids to production was 37 million euros, with 30 and 7 million respectively. The Government considers that "given the volume of projects that are going to participate in this call, the expected allocation of 30 million euros that were included in the General Budgets of 2018, was again clearly insufficient".
According to the latest reform of the Law, all production exceeding 80 points should receive 100% of aid, something that is currently not met with the current allocation. With these seven million and the supplement of credit destined to aid for the amortization of 10,845,000 euros authorized by the Council of Ministers on September 27, the Fund for the Protection of Cinematography goes from 70,766,000 euros to 88,611,000 euros.
During the past Council of Ministers, held on Friday 5, the ICAA was authorized to call for aid for the amortization of feature films worth 64 million euros, money corresponding to subsidies with retroactive payments, that is, the model previously in force , and in that they have entered films released in the year 2016. The helps of this section do not surpass 50% of the cost of the film and as a maximum they will be able to be granted 1.5 million euros. With this call, the transition to the current model of film subsidies is completed.
