Born in the United States, Chris Marcich joined the Motion Picture Association (MPA) as the president in charge of Regional Office in 1995. After serving as the Assistant US Trade Representative for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, he moved back to Europe in 2015 as MPA's president for International, splitting his time between Brussels and Croatia. In 2019, he was appointed CEO of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre (HAVC), and now he has been re-elected, starting his second run this year.

Ahead of the Cannes Film Festival, Cineuropa sat down with Marcich to break down the situation in Croatian cinema and hear all about the current plans of HAVC, which was established 15 years ago by the iconic Albert Kapović and now celebrates its anniversary in 2023 with a series of events and screenings throughout the country.

Cineuropa: HAVC is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Looking back, what do you see as its greatest successes?
Chris Marcich: HAVC quickly established itself as the foundation on which our industry is now built. It was created by filmmakers for filmmakers, taking inspiration from successful models in other countries like France and Denmark. We have a well-organised and transparent business model in which all stakeholders participate, and which is continuously evolving. During the pandemic and the earthquake in Zagreb, HAVC stayed open and ran its programmes. The results are palpable. Just to give you one example, we had a record 11 Croatian feature-length fiction films in our cinemas last year, of which seven were directed by debutants. Many of them screened and won awards at prestigious international festivals.

How would you describe the current state of Croatian cinema? What are its biggest assets and challenges?
Croatian cinema is on an upward trajectory. We have very talented creative and film crews whose domestic projects would flourish even more if they weren’t faced with limited sources of financing. Big international streamers have, if anything, exacerbated this problem by expressly indicating they are not interested in financing own productions in Southeast Europe. Too small? Too linguistically diverse? They fill their quotas elsewhere. HBO, once a beacon of creativity in the region, has pulled out.

We do run a very attractive and successful programme widely known as Filming in Croatia. Cash rebates are offered to attract foreign investors to shoot their own films here, taking advantage of our wonderful locations and providing well-paid jobs and work for local service production companies. Our tourism sector derives substantial tangible and intangible benefits from this. In the meantime, we are witnessing a race to the bottom as individual countries are being driven to compete with each other with ever more generous state aid to continue to attract otherwise already strong companies. This is not a healthy situation and needs a closer look at the EU level.

What are some of HAVC’s plans at the moment? What are the next strategic steps you are taking in the development of the Croatian film industry, both locally and internationally?
We are developing concrete legislation to increase funding by 50% over current levels for our new National Programme, which the government is expected to adopt shortly. We are scrutinising our levy provisions, preparing a tax-credit regime and planning to secure a more substantial contribution to local film financing by productions availing themselves of our cash-rebate programme. There will be greater emphasis on the development of projects and producing a better balance of arthouse films and films that appeal to wider audiences. We also plan to begin co-funding support for the production of series.

On the international level, we plan to participate in the new Eurimages pilot programme for the co-production of series. We will also ramp up our promotional activities. We are working as a matter of priority with our partners in EFAD [European Film Agencies] to (re)integrate the principle of cultural diversity as a real guidepost for policy makers at the EU level. We are keen to secure the role of independent European producers, and to strengthen and eenforce the definition of European works.