German Motion Picture Fund

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This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

With effect from January 2016, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy established the German Motion Picture Fund (“GMPF”), a new incentive scheme to strengthen the German film industry.



The new federal funding is administered by the German Federal Film Board (Filmförderungsanstalt, “FFA”) in accordance with the GMPF guidelines (“Guidelines”) and its annual budget is EUR 10 million.



The scheme is aimed to attract television series and internationally co-produced films with high production budgets.



The funding is structured in a similar way to the German Federal Film Fund (“DFFF”) and consists of non repayable grants that are calculated on the basis of the production expenditure spent in Germany.



In principle, funding is granted to applicants fulfilling the award criteria on an automatic basis without discretionary jury decisions. The award criteria relate, inter alia, to the project and its budget, a minimum spend of production costs in Germany and the exploitation of the project in Germany. In addition, a project has to pass a cultural test.



The funding can be combined with other public subsidies (for example with the DFFF or with other federal or regional funding), but due to EU law public funding generally cannot be used to finance more than 50% (or in certain cases 60%) of the budget of a project.



For more information, view our "German Motion Picture Fund" overview.