Chris Filip

Source: BFI

Chris Filip

Creative England executive Chris Filip is joining the UK Global Screen Fund (UKGSF) the newly-created role of international  business development manager.

Filip will report into Denitsa Yordanova, head of the UKGSF. He will be responsible for management of the strand including the assessment of international company growth strategies, analysis of companies’ business plans, assessment of corporate structures and creation of key performance indicators (KPIs). He starts the role on October 24.

Filip joins having worked with Creative England as programme manager for business and development initiative Creative Enterprise, where he managed the New Ideas fund, and the games business support programmes.

He has further expertise in the gaming world, having worked to design and help deliver Payload Studios’ Tentacle Zone incubator programme for underrepresented game studio founders, and co-founded Game Anglia, a not-for-profit community interest company growing the games industry in the east of England region.

Before that, Filip was game designer and product manager for games and tech companies such as Ubisoft and Funtaptic.

Financed by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and administered by the British Film Institute, the £7m per annum fund was launched last year (2021) to boost international development and distribution opportunities for the UK’s independent screen sector, across film, TV, documentary, animation and interactive narrative games content.

In its pilot year, 75 awards totalling £5.2m were made across the three strands: international distribution, international co-production and international business development.

The international business development strand is now open for applications, until October 13, supporting UK screen content businesses across film, TV, animation and interactive narrative video games to enhance their international activities. The fund offers non-repayable grants of between £50,000 and £200,000 in total for strategies starting in early 2023 and spanning three years.

The international distribution film sales support strand, part of the revised international distribution strand unveiled in August, is also open for applications, on a rolling basis, supporting UK sales agents to increase their international promotion and sales of live action and animated, fiction and documentary UK feature film projects. Funding is available for the international sale, marketing and promotion of a single eligible UK film in the form of non-recoupable grants of up to £25,000 for a single eligible film. A new P&A track will open soon, with details announced later this month.