Introduced in January 2014, the Lithuanian Film Tax Incentive fosters local and external film productions in Lithuania by inviting foreign filmmakers to cooperate with local production companies that could apply for state funding and find a local film donor willing to invest up to 30% of the production budget in exchange of a reduced corporate income tax.

According to the Lithuanian Film Centre’s statistics, the Film Tax Incentive is increasing each year: in 2021, filmmakers received more than 15 million euros. Compared with the results of 2020, the sum of financial aid has grown by 26%, which is the highest sum received since the Incentive has been in place. International filmmakers have spent as much as 37.9 million euros in Lithuania, going past the spending of the previous years, while the number of financed films has grown too: a total of 71 new films were financed in 2021, including 40 domestic, 19 foreign and 12 co-production projects. Throughout 2021, 19 foreign productions were taking place in Lithuania, 10 of which coming from the Scandinavian region (Sweden and Norway) and three of them received the most investments: the second season of Young Wallander by Jens Jonsson and Mani Masserat with 1.61 million euros and the mini-series The Playlist by Per-Olav Sørensen with 1.60 million euros, both using filming services by UAB Ahil, and Hilma by Lasse Hallström with 1.36 million euros, assisted by the Paprikai filmai filming services company. Another three projects were filmed by British filmmakers while the country also attracted authors from Germany, Estonia, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The domestic project that received the highest investment of 715,000 euros was the sci-fi Vesper [+lire aussi :
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Notable as well is the consistency of the companies’ investments. In 2021, a total of 126 investment certificates were issued to 78 investors, 28 Lithuanian companies of which were first-comers, while the rest were repeat investors. In total, between 2014 and 2021, 228 Lithuanian businesses have invested into filmmaking by taking advantage of the Incentive, and an overall budget of 50.7 million euros were attracted into the filmmaking industry. During the whole period, international filmmakers spent more than 140 million euros in Lithuania, and a quarter of those expenses were received in 2021 alone. For the nine years of its existence, the Incentive was used for the funding of 286 films – investments were made for production of 144 domestics film projects, 72 foreign films and 70 co-productions.