State Minister For Culture And Media Bernd Neumann handed German producers and the country’s reputation as film hub a boost after he agreed with the Reconstruction Credit Institute (KfW) to a package of financing instruments for development funding as well as intermediate and gap financing.

“The programme is an important step towards a long term improvement for the access to bank financing for the German producers,” Christoph E Palmer, managing director of the German Producers Alliance, observed.

“Film in Germany will be strengthened [by this project] and the position of the producers as well as the international competitiveness of the German film industry will be further improved,” Neumann added.

The idea of such a programme had been one of the key goals of the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition’s agreement from last year when the KfW had been called on to become more involved in film financing “in order to guarantee long term financing of feature film in Germany.”

The new measures were hammered out during a series of consultations between Neumann’s ministry, the German Federal Film Board, KfW and the German Producers Alliance, which was represented by producers Jens Meurer (Egoli Tossell Film), Carl Woebcken (Studio Babelsberg) and Alexander Thies, as well as Palmer, media lawyer Mathias Schwarz and consultant Michael Schmetz.

This latest initiative follows Neumann’s previous achievement in securing an annual Euros 60m budget from 2007 for the German Federal Film Fund incentive programme, which has supported numerous international co-productions shooting in Germany, such as InglouriousBasterds, TheWhite Ribbon, Anonymous and The Ghost Writer, as well as many national productions.

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