Norway 'Nordic champion' in collecting Eurimages film support

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

27/01/2012 - Norwegian cinema is Nordic champion in collecting EU support, having received €7.5 million or 37% of all Eurimages allocations for Nordic productions between 2007-2011, against Denmark and Sweden’s 20%, Finland’s 15% and Iceland’s 7%. Norway has received three-and-a-half times more funding than it has paid for annual fees to the Council of Europe’s fund for ”co-production, distribution, exhibition and digitisation of European cinematographic works”.

During a seminar at Norway’s Tromsø International Film Festival, the Norwegian Film Institute’s representative in Eurimages, senior advisor Nils Klevjer Aas explained that during the five years 12 Norwegian majority productions have received €4.8 million, while nine projects with Norwegian minority participation had accounted for €2.7 million.

”Norway is a late-comer to the international film scene – it didn’t sign the European Co-Production Treatyuntil 2009, and its production has traditionally been oriented at the domestic market,” Aas explained. ”At the same time Norwegian producers and directors had reached a stage of maturity, where ambitious projects with international aspirations were the next logical step. Between 2005-2008 the export of Norwegian features was doubled.”

Most recently, Eurimages has backed Norwegian directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s Kon-Tiki (€500,000), Petter Næss’s Into the White [trailer] (€250,000), Sarah Johnsen’s All That Matters Is Past (€270,000) and Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Pioneer (€400,000) and Hans Petter Moland’s The Prize Idiot (€460,000).

Eurimages has an annual budget of €23 million, of which Norway’s share is €500,000. The EU’s MEDIA programme – complementary to Eurimages, but with an industrial goal – is also considering Norwegian cinema, last year putting €2.7 million into, among others, 25 Norwegian film projects, including five for distribution, according to Media Desk Norge.