The French-German Film Meetings highlighted the absence of concrete progress on tax incentives and investment obligations

A moment from the round-table (© Robert Recker)

Voted on at the end of 2024 and implemented on 1 January this year, the new federal film law (FFG – read our article) reorganising public support aimed at funding the 7th art in Germany was dissected in Paris last week, during the French-German Film Meetings (organised by German Films and Unifrance in league with the French-German Film Academy). And the conclusions are clearly a mixed bag, because whilst the introduction of automatic production support under the aegis of the FFA (German Federal Film Board) is progressing (slowly but surely), the implementation of tax incentives and investment obligations for broadcasters which were supposed to round off this first stage of the process, has practically fallen by the wayside.

According to Katharina Hiersemenzel (Constantin Film), "tax incentives (in the form of cash rebates increasing from 25% to cover 30% of eligible German spending) are supposed to rise from 133 to 250 million euros per year. That’s what we want. The deal with the finance minister was that we double the available resources for the next four years, but the Bundestag must lend its approval every year. The ministry approved this agreement, but only if investment obligations are introduced. We subsequently started negotiating with streamers and TV networks who pack a punch in lobbying terms. But, unfortunately, we’ve been thrown a curveball these past few months, because we’re now being advised to negotiate bilaterally with streamers and TV networks to ensure they commit voluntarily. We’re told that this will be a better solution because it will guarantee that films are shot in Germany: quotas do exist for respecting the German language, but there’s nothing currently stopping people from filming in the Czech Republic, for example. It’s a sad situation because investment obligations and tax incentives work so well in France and they would benefit everyone. We hope there’ll be a happy ending, but for the time being, the legislation is stuck in a drawer somewhere."

For Peter Dinges (who heads up the FFA), "a 20% rate of investment obligations in France is impressive. If we don’t make this effort, there’ll be collateral repercussions on co-operation. With agreements based on voluntary contributions we might reach our goals more quickly. But how big will these investment obligations be? How will the rights be shared? A voluntary approach might work, even though some people are calling it naive..."

This climate of uncertainty was confirmed by Jakob Weydemann (Weydemann Bros.): "production costs have risen and we’re experiencing funding issues. The streamers have to be on our side. But we need to know how to position ourselves in order to take on "global players" in the consolidation phase. If we don’t work that out now, we’ll slide into dependency. Right now, in Germany, we have an incredibly diversified production landscape, with independent producers, but that won’t work with five players dominating the world. We need a law, but everyone’s already focused on the elections in two years’ time."

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(Translated from French)