Founded in 2015 in order to support and promote the distribution and circulation of international co-productions, the ACM Distribution funding component, managed by the CNC with support from the MEDIA programme – Creative Europe, has just launched its seventh call for applications. It’s worth noting that it is now open to all co-productions between a MEDIA country and a non-MEDIA country, and the financial contribution of the MEDIA co-producer must be somewhere between 20% and 70%, for features of all genres.

As a reminder, the 11 films that benefited from ACM Distribution backing in 2018 include The Insult [+lee también:
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entrevista: Ziad Doueiri
ficha de la película] by Ziad Doueiri, Wajib [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Annemarie Jacir, Birds of Passage [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Christina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, Rafiki [+lee también:
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entrevista: Wanuri Kahiu
ficha de la película] by Wanuri Kahiu, Good Manners [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra, and Yomeddine [+lee también:
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entrevista: A.B. Shawky, Dina Emam
ficha de la película] by Abu Bakr Shawky.

To be eligible for ACM Distribution, the film or batch of features (up to a maximum of four) must have at least one co-producer based in a MEDIA member country and another in a territory outside of MEDIA or Eurimages.

Companies wishing to apply (encompassing producers, sales agents and content aggregators based in a MEDIA country and owned either directly by majority involvement or by nationals of these countries) must present a strategy for distribution in at least three countries (at least one of which must be in the MEDIA area, excluding France, and another in a country that is not a member of the MEDIA zone), and suggest one or more exhibition methods (theatres, festivals, TV, VoD and so on) for each movie. It should be stressed that innovative approaches are particularly encouraged (such as simultaneous VoD release and festival distribution, multiple circulation across several territories, straight to VoD, online festivals and so on) and that a coordinated distribution and circulation strategy is required for these films. 

The amount of support is still capped at €60,000 per project (although the cap of €15,000 per distributor no longer applies) and may not exceed 50% of the total sum of the distribution expenses. Nevertheless, this percentage may rise to 80% for debut and sophomore features, films co-produced with countries with a more fragile film industry, or if the final production budget is under or equal to €1.25 million.

The deadline for the submission of application forms is 5 April. A detailed description of ACM Distribution and the application form itself can be found on the CNC’s website – please click here.

In the context of this particular component, 35 films have already benefited from support for distribution in 193 territories (number of releases), and 75 of the distributors that received backing are located outside of the MEDIA area.