07/02/2006

European films with MEDIA support are strongly represented at this year’s 78th Academy Awards. All in all, there are five MEDIA supported films nominated for one of the prestigious golden statues that will be awarded on Sunday, March 5 2006, in Hollywood.

Four out of the five nominees in the Best Foreign Language Film category are fully or partly European productions. Three of them have received MEDIA support – either in development, distribution or promotion: Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noël) [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christian Carion
interview: Christophe Rossignon
film profile] , Sophie Scholl [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Paradise Now [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

The nominations of these movies for the Oscars underline not only the vitality of the European film industry, but also the importance and success of the European MEDIA programme – aimed at supporting the European film industry. Besides these three fiction movies, two other MEDIA-supported films, the French March of the Penguins [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and the Austrian-Belgian co-production Darwin’s Nightmare, have been nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category.

The current MEDIA-programmes, MEDIA Training and MEDIA plus, run from 2001 to 2006 and have a budget of €513m. The MEDIA Programmes remain of vital importance to the European audiovisual sector. In 2005, MEDIA invested €100m in European cinema, in training, development, distribution and promotion. Last year, among other actions, MEDIA financed more than 1,500 distribution projects, enabling European films to be seen outside their territory of origin.

For the 2007-2013 financial period, the European Commission has suggested doubling the budget of the follow-up programme, MEDIA 2007, to over €1bn.