Mandalay Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ US action title Archangel and Rupert Street Films and Blackwater Films’ UK period thriller Bedlam are among the latest international productions to access Romania’s cash rebate scheme.
Directed by Will Eubank, Archangel, previously known as Headwaters, shot in Romania in the summer of 2025, doubling Romania for the western US state of Wyoming. Jim Caviezel stars in the film as a former Green Beret protecting his neighbours against a ruthless corporation. Archangel will be released in the US this November by Sony Pictures Releasing. Will Eubank is the director. The local producer was Bucharest-based Alien Films Entertainment.
Bedlam, directed by Jon Shaikh, shot partly in location in Bucharest in autumn 2025, doubling for 1750s London. Capture Entertainment is handling international sales on the indie film that sees martial arts star Scott Adkins play a bare-knuckle boxer whose mission is to break his sister out of the infamous psychiatric hospital where she has been wrongly incarcerated.
Family Film Entertainment was the local co-producer.
Furthermore, Italian director Edoardo Ponti, son of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti, shot the romantic drama The Wedding Dress, set in a displaced persons camp after World War II, in Romania last year.
The film stars the UK’s Billie Boullet, Ukrainian-American Ivana Sakhno and Austria’s Lucas Englander. It is being produced by the US’ Lee Nelson and David Buelow, with Frame Films One as the local Romanian partner handling the rebate application.
Relaunched in July 2024, Romania’s incentive scheme offers a cash rebate of up to 30% of the eligible expenditure, as long as the local spend is at least €100,000. It is capped at €10m per project, with a total budget of approximately €250m allocated for the scheme’s initial three years until the end of 2026.
The Romanian ministry of culture has proposed extending the rebate programme by an additional three years, until the end of 2029 for the signing of financing agreements and until 2031 for payments.
In addition, the cash rebate was accessed by Canal+’s eight-part historical drama Lost Paradise, which filmed entirely in Romania in late 2025. It brought together a major international creative team led by French producer Alain Goldman for Moriah Media, with Legendary 193’s Patrick Wachsberger, who is also handling sales, Darren Aronofsky is executive producing the project. The series tells the story of the Ashkenazi people from the mid-19th century to the present day.
Local stories
Local Romanian productions are also benefiting from the cash rebate. Millionaire Boy, the fifth film directed by Romanian comedian and YouTube Influencer Mircea Bravo (aka Mircea Popa) and writer-director Cristi Ilisuan, shot in 20 locations around Cluj in May.
Radu Stancu’s Bucharest-based company deFilm has accessed the rebate for three productions screening in TIFF’s film programme this week. They are: Mihai Mincan’s Venice Horizons title Milk Teeth, selected for the Romanian Days’ feature competition; Paul Negoescu’s Atlas Of The Universe, screening out of competition in that section, and Greek film Titanic Ocean, screening in the main competition, on which Stancu is the Romanian co-producer.
“One thing I genuinely admire about our scheme, compared to other incentives I’ve worked with elsewhere in Europe, is the speed of payment once the process is complete,” Stancu told Screen. “After you finalise the documentation, pass all the checks, and submit the audit, the money arrives very quickly, in a matter of weeks. That’s a real advantage in terms of cash flow for productions that are already stretched. Many other European schemes have the right structure on paper but take much longer to disburse.
On that front, Romania is competitive.”
No comments yet