The Finnish film & TV industry have access to an additional €5 million for upcoming productions, and the Danish sector to more than €2.6 million (DKK 20 million).

The €5M additional grants from the Ministry of Education and Culture, to be administered by the Finnish Film Foundation (FFF), is earmarked towards the production of domestic films and TV dramas.

“This state support to the national audio-visual sector is very significant,” stated Lasse Saarinen, CEO at the Finnish Film Foundation. “The €5m grant is about a quarter of our production subsidies for a normal year. This government’s investment will attract at least €7.5 million in other funding to the sector; therefore the total direct impact of the aid on the audio-visual sector will be valued at around €12.5 million,” he said.

Saarinen underlined the healthy extra public cash that will allow the Film Foundation for the first time, to allocate subsequent grants to the TV drama sector. He believes this financial stimulus will “give the whole industry faith in the future and new energy”. 

Meanwhile Denmark’s Ministry of Culture announced yesterday that it has agreed to create a special DKK 20 million Fund to help the film & TV productions particularly damaged financially by the Covid-19 outbreak.

Culture Minister Joy Mogensen said: "The Coronavirus crisis and the ensuing lockdown have affected every part of our society. That is why the government, together with the parliamentary parties, has set up schemes to help as many people as possible. But there is still an extra hand needed for some particularly vulnerable industries. This is why we are now investing in a special fund of DKK 20 million, earmarked towards the film and TV productions that have been hit by severe financial losses because the productions had to be paused during the shutdown. The Fund won’t be able to solve all the challenges faced by the film and television industry, but hopefully it can contribute to helping more producers through the crisis,” said Mogensen.

The DKK 20 million special film & TV package will be allocated as part of an overall DKK 171.1 million Cultural Agreement for 2020, approved by the Parliament’s Finance Committee. The money will come from earnings from the national lottery and the gambling industry.