The author of the newly published book Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix talks about an ‘ideal European co-production’

Authored by Petar Mitric, the 2025 book “Co-production Landscape in Europe: From Eurimages to Netflix” (2025) explores the evolving terrain of European co-productions. In our interview, we dive into the notion of an "ideal co-production", the audience as a “marginalised” stakeholder, and the varying approaches to streamers in the European context. Mitric is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at the University of Copenhagen, whose research focuses on European audiovisual policy.

Cineuropa: In your book, you talk about the concept of an "ideal European co-production" that goes beyond the dominant perspectives of policy professionals and film practitioners. Could you elaborate on its relevance in the vitality of European cinema?
Petar Mitric: My impulse was to understand how policymakers define "ideal European co-productions" and what kind of films major funding bodies seek. I attended meetings between different film funds, where they discussed what they considered their most successful films, and looked into the lists of production companies that recurrently get public funding for their films based on previous successes. An ideal co-production for a lot of public funding bodies would be a film that was at an A-list festival, maybe did well with an audience, but this wasn’t a must (a wider social impact wasn’t something they were actively looking for or measuring, and it was seen more as an added value). That’s when I realised that perhaps this mindset should change. The point of this framework is to invite policymakers and the film industry to revise their idea of an "ideal co-production". This includes engaging audiences—citizens who essentially co-finance these films through their taxes and participation in public funding—more in what is funded, produced, and distributed in Europe, as well as linking this "idealness" not just to the festival success of films but also to how much social value they offer to ordinary people.

Could you talk about the interpretive communities model discussed in the book, which includes the audience as one of the underrepresented stakeholders in the co-production policy debates?
As a scholar, I was fascinated by the framework called Interpretive Policy Analysis, which emerged in the late 1990s and originally had nothing to do with film. I was intrigued by this approach because the political scientists who developed it argued that policy is not just about figures, economics, and profit. It’s also about empowering and engaging with the marginalised stakeholders to come up with solutions. I thought, perhaps, we could do the same in the film industry to see how European cinema could become more widely watched among audiences. When you look at the admission figures of European films, you see there is definitely room for improvement there.

So I tried to identify the marginalised groups that should be invited to the debate. First of all, there are many filmmakers (“film practitioners”) who are marginalised. We tend to choose networks of filmmakers who have a proven track record and are often the ones who receive public funding. But many fantastic stories actually disappear because many filmmakers don’t have the chance to present them. Sometimes, they come from a country in crisis, where the public film fund has been dormant. Sometimes, there are sociological factors at play. In Denmark, for example, it’s difficult to make a debut film if you don’t come from a national film school or follow a classic path. Audiences are the other important stakeholder group. I tried to spend time with all these groups and come up with ideas on how public film funds could democratise and open up their decision-making and strategic thinking processes.

In what way is audience design important in this discussion?
Audience design was translated to the film world around 2011-2012 by TorinoFilmLab, which has focused on designing films so they could speak to audiences better. I participated in this programme and worked on films as an audience designer. While I was writing the book, I started thinking about whether we could move audience design to as early as the development stage. Who do we want to reach with this film? And what do we want to achieve with it as a film team? In this process, I’ve also observed that some directors would think it’s insulting, even violent, to demand they think about audiences during this creative phase. I also see audience design as a necessary postmortem analysis of successful and unsuccessful films. We tend to ignore failures, while I think the analysis of them is as crucial. So I try to establish audience design as a mindset that covers the entire value chain, including the analysis of finished films that have completed their exploitation cycle.

In the book, you point out the public funds’ responsibility for the overproduction of films as the elephant in the room during policymaking debates on European co-productions.
Public film funds tend to go for quick fixes, which may see, for example, an increase in production funding, which would then lead to a greater volume of films produced per year. The thinking behind it is that if we produce more films for certain (underrepresented) groups, these groups would find them. But it’s important not only to make films about certain topics but also to let the right people make them. Otherwise, we still give out money to the same companies that produce films on new, hot topics. The problem also lies in decision-making: Who are the ones deciding in selection committees? Whose taste do the projects need to meet in order to get funding? And then distribution: How come some great films, relished by festival audiences, end up with below-thousand tickets sold? There is funding, but it needs to be redistributed in a much more strategic way so that it targets development and distribution more, in order to save European cinema from the overproduction of films that don’t end up anywhere.

Another issue is tax incentives that continue to increase, while public funding is generally being reduced. This contributes to the overproduction of films, as tax and other incentives are geared primarily toward production to stimulate such activity within countries. There have been policy initiatives in some countries that have sought to move funding away from production and more towards development or distribution. Denmark, for example, is very good at funding the development of projects to avoid many underdeveloped projects entering production. But that’s just one part of it. It requires a lot more work to make it more functional and effective.

Let’s turn to the evolving landscape of European co-productions and the adaptation that demands “innovation,” as you argue in the book.
By innovation, I mean a redefinition of an independent production, or independence in more philosophical terms, and what it means to be an independent producer. The definition that we had so far doesn’t work in a new reality that is driven by streaming. In the past, independence was defined through the autonomy of producers from broadcasters or big corporations and retaining the IP rights on projects they develop (in the context of co-productions, co-producers share ownership and revenues, which is defined in co-production treaties and agreements). European policymakers, in particular in France, have attempted to incorporate streaming services into the existing European co-production model, but it doesn’t work because it mixes two paradigms: a culturally oriented, public service one, and the other that is sheer commercial, shareholder-driven. So innovation is teaching producers in Europe this kind of portfolio way of thinking. Instead of pursuing one traditional model of independent production, they can have a portfolio of different projects and match them with the most suitable model.

When I talk to different producers, I realise that today they really do have projects that are great for streaming platforms. And in that context, it may be fine if they decide to grant the IP rights to a streamer because that’s a one-off project that could generate revenue. There are also projects where it’s okay to share the IP rights with a streamer because those are projects that require really, really big budgets that only streaming services can secure. So let’s find a deal that makes such projects happen while still helping the filmmaker keep part of the ownership, even if it can’t be the entire film. So that was the idea behind innovation: combining models instead of relying on one probably dying model.

The “Grey Zone” approach is something the Film i Väst research team coined as a term, with Tomas Eskilsson as the head of strategy and film policy, where they define the cases where public funds and global streaming services work together. Such collaboration is controversial, and some people argue it may even be illegal, as in this way, public funds give taxpayers’ money to big corporations, and then these global streaming services retain all the IP rights and ownership, and they can then keep producing other seasons, spinoffs, prequels, and sequels and earn money on something that is essentially financed with public funding. But then the others say it’s fine, as we should find a model to integrate into the policy system, which contributes to the development of the ecosystem and is an adaptation to the new reality. So we still don’t have an answer, and there are still no clear regulations. That’s why we call it the "Grey Zone". As the research has shown, about 40% of public service broadcasters have already tried this model. So even though it’s controversial, it’s not unpopular.

There are different approaches to streamers across Europe. What opportunities or challenges do these perspectives present in the context of co-productions?
It’s really an important question because it’s a complex one. It points to where Europe is headed right now. We lived in times where European film policy was pulling all the nations together and helping those who were lagging behind to catch up with the rest of Europe. If you analyse the co-production policies of the 1990s, which I do to an extent in the Eurimages chapter in the book, you can see that they focused on helping Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, the Balkan countries after the war in Yugoslavia, and the countries in the Caucasus. So it was really about solidarity, synchronisation, harmonisation, and inventing a single European film policy language that everybody would understand. That’s why the co-production model became so popular, and it worked not only in Europe but was also exported as a policy model to many other regions. Wherever there was cultural diversity, small nations fighting for their identity, many looked toward Europe and its co-production model and film policy.

What happened now with the new policy, especially within the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), is that they tried to incorporate global streaming services into the European policy system by forcing them to invest into local production, according to local cultural conditions. It’s a nice idea and a very relevant and important approach, but in practice it has worked mainly for the big industries and nations with high audiovisual capacities. So it ended up dividing Europe into several tracks. Now we have the “Big Five” countries that work extensively with streaming services; some smaller countries with developed audiovisual industries like Denmark, Sweden, or Belgium; a number of countries that occasionally collaborate with streaming services; and there are those that are totally left out. And they are left out because their audiovisual industries aren’t strong enough or because they don’t have the politicians and people in the industry who have the expertise or capacity to lobby in negotiations over these laws and investment obligations. So the outcome is that in some countries, industries are growing stronger as they diversify business models thanks to streaming services, while other countries are becoming increasingly peripheral. That’s a new trend compared to the classical European co-production policy, and the results are already visible.

Co-production isn’t the first choice some have in mind now, especially among young, early-career producers. Those entering the field are often less inclined to pursue the classic European co-production route, as there is less money and stimulation for them there. And this ultimately means less diversity and collaboration, which can be detrimental to Europe as a political project.