Council of Europe Eurimages
EURIMAGES is the European Cinema Support Fund, providing support for co-production. Whenever countries not involved in the European Union's Media Plus program are concerned, it also supports distribution and showing.
Currently, 33 countries (out of the 45 Council of Europe members) are part of the program, namely: Germany, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Financial support to co-production includes an advance on revenues. The following basic conditions must be met in order for a project to be eligible:
- The project must be a feature length film - fiction, animation or documentary, with a minimum 70-minute duration, and aiming for a theatrical first exhibition.
- The project must include at least two co-producers from different Fund member states.
- The majority co-producer must not have a participation above 80%, while the minority co-producer must not have a participation below 10%. An exception is opened for bilateral co-productions whose budget is over 5 million euros - in this case, the majority co-producer's may have a share up to 90%.
- Participation of producers from states that are not part of EURIMAGES may not be greater than 30%. Funding from countries not part of EURIMAGES may not be greater than 49%. In any case, funding from a single non-member state may never be greater than 30%.
- Apart from the source of funding and information regarding the production companies' property and direction, the project's European nature must be confirmed through certain criteria specified in the Application Rules - specifically, by using a points grid.
- At least 50% of the project's funding must already be confirmed by the time the application is made. Each project's funding must include at least one public financial support or a pre-sale to a television station.
Each project can be enrolled and withdrawn from the selection's order of business up to three times. When a project is rejected by the EURIMAGES Board of Management, it can not be submitted again.
The main selection criteria are based on: the project's artistic quality; the experience of the director, producers and the technical and artistic teams; potential for circulation; the project's commercial potential; artistic and / or technical cooperation between producers; and the level of confirmed funding.
Other conditions apply, such as: filming must only begin after the Board of Management's meeting where the application is evaluated.
Normally, there are five application periods each year. Granted funding must not exceed 15% of each project's production budget, up to an absolute maximum of 700,000 euros. Whent the project's budget is lower than 1.5 million euros, funding may go up to 20% of the budget.
The Fund's yearly budget is approximately 20 million euros. Most of these funds are destined to supporting co-productions. The available amount is distributed throughout five annual selection meetings.
According to article 3.7 of the Fund's Regulations for co-productions, candidates must contact their respective national representatives in the Eurimages Board of Management as early as possible - otherwise, their projects will not be included in the order of business.
