Canarian production companies will receive 3.6 million in aid to make films

The archipelago is the fourth region in Spain that receives the most funds from the Ministry of Culture to make films after Catalonia, Madrid and Andalusia

November 16 2022 (16:01 WET)
Filming on Arrieta beach. Lanzarote Film Commission.
Filming on Arrieta beach. Lanzarote Film Commission.

The Institute of Cinematography (ICAA) of the Ministry of Culture, allocates 3.6 million in aid to companies based in the Canary Islands for the production of feature films.

The Canary Islands is the fourth region in the country that receives the most funds to produce films. In the first place is Catalonia (8,347,280 euros), Community of Madrid (6,337,370 euros) and Andalusia (3,721,286 euros).

After the archipelago, the Basque Country (2,153,910.8 euros), Galicia (1,948,000 euros) and Navarra (1,485,620 euros) are located.

The total amount amounts to 27.6 million euros, of which two million are financed by European funds for recovery (PRTR).

On the other hand, the Council of Ministers has also given the green light today to the royal decree that regulates the granting of subsidies to cinematographic exhibition halls to support their work in disseminating cultural diversity in 2022, worth 10.17 million euros.

The resolution of aid to the production of feature films responds to the second phase of this year's call. The first was launched in May and, in total, the Government has granted 54 million euros to this item, of which five million are financed through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR) and the rest with the Film Protection Fund.

The beneficiary projects have been 28, which are added to the 27 of the first round. In total there are 55 projects, of which 51 correspond to the category 'fiction' and four to the category of 'animation'. Of those 55, 30 are international co-productions.

Of the 55 beneficiaries, 52 have a technical team with at least 40% female presence, which represents 94.5%. As for the average total budget is 3.47 million euros in the category of 'fiction' and 5.2 million in 'animation'.


Support for cinemas

The aid to cinemas approved by the Council of Ministers aims to guarantee their activity "as fundamental agents of the dissemination of cultural diversity, especially while the habit of returning to cinemas is recovering and all the adverse effects of the pandemic in this area are overcome", according to the Ministry of Culture.

Of the 104.8 million viewers who went to cinemas in 2019, it went to 27 million in 2020, 75% less, and to 41.4 million in 2021, 61% less, according to data from the Ministry.

The requirements to access the aid include, in addition to maintaining the cinematographic exhibition activity during the year 2022, having screened, between January 1 and August 31, at least 25% of "community" films, that is, produced by a member state of the EU and with a minimum duration of 60 minutes.

The ministry grants "double value" to those in which any of the official languages in Spain, languages recognized statutorily of the autonomous communities or legally recognized Spanish sign languages are used mostly.

The criteria for granting aid are based on the number of screens available in each room, the percentage of sessions of community films programmed and the total number of sessions of community and non-community films programmed between January 1 and August 31, 2022.

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