Cannes 2012: Italy's Lazio Region Touts $38 Million Film Fund for 2012/2013

Italy’s Lazio region, which includes Rome, is at the Cannes Film Festival to tout its film incentives and look to attract new productions. It also said its Lazio Film Fund has proven effective in combating runaway production.

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For 2012 and 2013, the fund, which launched in 2011, is putting €30 million ($38 million) in funding at the disposal of productions that spend at least 40 percent of their budget in Lazio, the region said Sunday. An extra 10 percent incentive is also available for international productions.
In 2011, the region’s funding benefited 114 films, documentaries and TV movies. Lazio highlighted that it played a role in Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love. Other films financed with help from the Lazio Film Fund include Italian films in Cannes, such as Matteo Garrone’s Reality, Dario Argento’s Dracula 3D and Me and You by Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as Caesar Must Die by the Taviani brothers.

“Thanks to this regional fund, €260 million ($332 million) were mobilized overall for investments in the film and audiovisual sector,” the Lazio region said.

Fabiana Santini, Lazio region councilman for arts, culture and sports, on Sunday presented a look at early achievements of the fund for Lazio’s production sector.

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“In just 20 months, we managed to approve the Regional Law for the Film and Audiovisual Sector and make funding of €45 million ($58 million) available to national and international productions for three years,” he said. “We also made the first year’s installment of 15 million euros retroactive, as an immediate response to the sector’s demands, the aim being to reverse that process of delocalization which had led to an exodus by many productions from Lazio in recent years.”

Concluded Santini: “We chose to invest during the current recession, adopting an anti-cyclical policy, and time has proved us right. In so doing we have helped halt the flight of investments from our region and contributed to maintaining the level of overall investments in film production in a difficult year like 2011, which gives us enormous satisfaction.”