MINORITY IS BEAUTIFUL

The advantages of international co-productions where Italian companies participate with a minority stake. An exclusive survey by Cinema & Video International.

The Fund for Minority Co-productions introduced by the DGCA had an annual grant budget of € 5 million in 2019. The maximum allocation per project could not exceed 60% of the Italian quota or be more than € 300,000.

The premise of the plan was that any product jointly realized by Italian and foreign producers, without regard to whether the Italian participation was the majority or minority quota, would be recognized as being of Italian nationality and could, therefore, also benefit from other support. Created to assist smaller or younger production companies entering the international market, it turned out to be an excellent instrument that acted as a catalyst for investors from all over the world who were attracted by the whole support system offered by Italy and ended up being introduced by other similar foreign entities.

The following analysis consists of original data processing which starts with the decrees regulating the allocation of the contributions (7 in total, considering the partial allocation for 2022) and the extractions carried out through the “Database of support for works” available on the institutional portal of the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisuals [DGCA]of the Italian Ministry of Culture [MiC]. The year given is the one in which the open call referred to in the decrees was issued and not the one in which the contributions were actually allocated (which may not coincide).

Excluding waivers, 72 Italian production companies in all took advantage of the funding for minority co-productions with a total of 122 works funded (fig. 2 and fig. 3).

€ 15.76 million was disbursed in total (the 2022 allocations are still partial since only the beneficiaries of the first session have been announced) and each company received on average just under € 219,000. The individual works obtained funds ranging from a minimum of € 13,000 to a maximum of € 300,000: on average this came to around € 129,000 per work.

The success of the measure related to minority co-productions is evidenced not just by the involvement of countries distributed over the 5 continents (from France, the country that collected the greatest number of partnerships, 26, to the co-production with Australia, passing through the Americas, Asia and Africa) but also by the numerous international awards received, proof of the considerable increase in the general level of quality of Italian cinema: Alcarràs, directed by Carla Simon triumphed at the Berlinale 2022, a co-production between Kino Produzioni (Italy 20%) and Avalon Productora Cinematográfica (Spain 80%), which obtained a contribution of € 203,000 from the DGCA-MiC in the 2019 Minority Co-productions Open Call; at Cannes 2022, the Jury Prize went to EO by Jerzy Skolimowski (ex equo with The Eight Mountains by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch, another Italian co-production), which was produced by Skopia Film (Poland, 80%), Alien Films (Italy 20%), and had obtained a contribution of the value of € 150,000 from the 2020 minority open call. The other multi-award-winning films that have received contributions as Italian minority productions are: Il Boemo, by Petr Václav (€ 300,000 in 2019) produced by Dugong (Italy, 26%), Mimesis Film (Czech Republic, 64%), Sentimentalfilm (Slovakia 10%); No dogs or Italians allowed by Alain Ughetto (€ 147,000 in 2019) produced by Graffitidoc (Italy, 10.06%) together with a production team composed by Les Films du Tambour de Soie (France), Lux Fugit (Belgium), Nadasdy Film (Switzerland), and Ocidental Filmes (Portugal).

FoNte: elaborazioNi SU dati dgca/ SoUrce: dgca data ProceSSiNg