SKIES...THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU NEVER SEE ANYWHERE ELSE

JONATHAN MEES

France offers a rich variety of shooting locations, with a broad variety of both natural landscapes and period architecture, including Rustrel in Provence, which is also known as France’s Colorado. “The red-orange rocks in Rustrel are spectacular, and then there are buildings like the Chateau de Chantilly, in the Hauts de France region, which doubled for Croatia; and Cannes has doubled for Los Angeles in a US production that we can’t yet name,” digital director at Film France, Vincent Florant, says. “Looking at the bigger picture, many of our local film commissions have formulated offers to meet a wide range of needs including doubling. The Pays de la Loire region, for example, features a large selection of locations ranging from urban and rural through to coastal, industrial and historical. The richness and variety of French heritage sites and natural landscapes is enduringly attractive to filmmakers and this can be complemented by a wide range of simple, adaptable locations that can pass for many other places. Period drama The Serpent Queen — an eight-part series based on Leonie Frieda's book Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France — was filmed in several locations, mostly castles, throughout the whole of France, and also at Provence Studios, in Martigues, southwest of Marseille. France has a well-earned reputation for professionalism and adaptability and increasingly for the quality of its VFX specialists. The Serpent Queen executive producer, John Bernard, says: “In France, the expertise of the VFX crews is very high. Also working both on location and with VFX in France saves us time and energy. We shoot and produce the effects in the same places, which creates a strong integration between the work on set and the digital work that comes after, mainly because the exchange of information is so much more fluid than if we had chosen to outsource the VFX. Obviously, it is also interesting from an economic point of view, since you recover 40% of the tax credit on the expenses here after the shoot — provided of course that you fulfil certain criteria.”

Due to the incredible variety of Poland's locations, the country could be called ‘Europe’s chameleon’: “Whatever you need to recreate in your production — the Middle Ages, the realities of World War II, the communist era or a modern city — you can easily find all this in Poland. But just as important is the fact that such places are very close to each other,” the Polish Film Institute’s Pola Strój says. “The film Silent Twins required a meticulous recreation of interiors and exteriors of Britain and Wales in the 70s, 80s and 90s, which was achieved using facilities over almost the whole of the country. It was extremely demanding, but our amazing set-builders and crews rose to the challenge. Also, the Polish-New Zealand co-production Joika, about one of the most famous American ballerinas, Joy Womack, shot in Warsaw, which was doubling as Moscow for the purposes of the production.”

Aside from the capital city, one of the most easily transformed Polish cities is Wrocław. The city imitated Prague in Petr Kazda's and Tomás Weinreb’s I, Olga Hepnarová; coldwar Berlin in Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies; and in Paweł

Pawlikowski's Cold War; as well as Rotterdam in Mike van Diem’s flm Character

“Gdansk, one of the most beautiful Polish cities, featured in the Oscar-winning adaptation of The Tin Drum, as well as in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, where the Gdansk quay housed a secret CIA headquarters,” Strój adds. “Then there’s Przemyśl, a small town on the Polish-Ukrainian border with a rich history and a concentration of well-preserved original buildings, where you can shoot stories set in the past. History has left a clear mark on the city's architecture, hence the similarity to Lviv, but the 19th-century style also allows Przemyśl to double for places such as Vilnius.”

Global Drama Series Choose Greece

“SERIES ONE of Tehran shot with Athens doubling for Iran, and series two where Glenn Close joined the show, was also flmed in Athens. Tehran series three flmed in our capital from January to July 2023. The thriller Do Not Hesitate chose the mountains on the island of Crete to showcase Syria. More specifcally, they used the Nida Plateau in this suspense drama, which was produced by

Lemming Film and US production company Heretic Films, Greek Film Centre's Stavroula Geronimakisays. Leontine Petit, the flm’s producer, says: “We did not expect to fnd such great locations in Greece, or even in Europe, for this project. The shoot went beyond our expectations and we’re looking forward to coming back with new projects.”

“Millennium Media’s gangster movie The Enforcer — a.k.a. Barracuda, starring Antonio Banderas — was shot in summer 2021 and had Thessaloniki doubling as Miami,” Geronimaki says. “The BBC’s The Little Drummer Girl series used Elefsina to double for Lebanon and also Nikaia in Athens for Palestine. That shoot took place in 2018 with the flmmakers also securing scenes at the Acropolis in Athens.”