The policy of internationalisation of East European film industries: east-west co-productions 2009–2019

Abstract

Only ten years ago, producers in Eastern Europe could apply to one-two sources of production financing in their home countries. If they failed to receive financing from these sources, they would close down the project and move to another one. Also, it was impossible to co-produce without securing domestic production financing first, which kept co-producing a privilege of the few auteurs and producers of high national (and transnational) reputation. During the past decade, however, we have witnessed a surge of supranational script labs, training programmes, co-production markets and co-development funds across Europe. They diversified sources of financing for films and led to the emergence of the new class of young East European producers who think internationally already while developing their projects and do not give up on their projects when they face rejections from film funds in home countries. This article will examine the solutions that the policy of internationalization, which targets film projects at the development stage, brought vis-à-vis financial and political challenges that traditionally surround East European cinemas. The analysis will rely on the data I generated while preparing the report on co-productions between Eastern and Western Europe ordered by the co-production market When East Meets West.

Keywords:

• Internationalisation
• eastern europe
• serbian cinema
• co-production
• film policy

Acknowledgements

Research for this article was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).

Research for this article was supported by the co-production market WHEN EAST MEETS WEST under the Creative Europe Programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Head of the Serbian Film Fund and Glavonic mention the seven rejections in the interview they jointly gave to the N1 television on 18 August 2018. The interview is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8js28SppS0k. Accessed on 4 May 2020.

2 Informal interviews were conducted with the following world sales agents: Intramovies, Taskovski Films, New Europe Film Sales and Slingshot Films.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (reg. no.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734).

Notes on contributors

Petar Mitric

Petar Mitric is a senior researcher at the Charles University in Prague, Film Studies Department. He received his PhD in European film policy (with the focus on European co-production) from the University of Copenhagen. In 2016, he co-founded the Co-production Research Network (CoRN) that gathers film scholars, practitioners and policy makers from more than 30 countries. In 2018, Petar edited the book European Film and Television Co-production: Policy and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan).