Nordisk Film: Good new film deal

The government parties together a broad coalition of parties have just announced a film agreement that will help ensure a better and more sustainable economy for Danish films.

The agreement includes a requirement for DR and TV 2 to purchase screening rights for Danish films totaling at least DKK 45 million annually and a goal for the Danish Film Institute to award extra funding to films that do not receive support from the regional film funds and where it does not make sense to film in the regional funds' areas. This pleases Egmont-owned Nordisk Film, which also welcomes the review of future film funding and the possibility of introducing incentive schemes that favour audience success, as is already known from Norway and Sweden.

“We are pleased with the broad film agreement. It's great that the public service broadcasters will now be obliged to take increased responsibility for Danish film, but at a level where they can also have their own series production. It's also good that there will be more support for films that do not receive regional funding. We are also ready to constructively participate in a study of how future film funding can be organised and how strong incentive schemes can be created. We must remember that we are in a situation where Danish films are severely underfunded,” says Nordisk Film CEO Allan Mathson Hansen.

He also emphasises other good parts of the film agreement: For example, a strategy for supporting content targeted at children and young people, a focus on increased talent development, and the creation of a new institute for game development.

The film agreement also mentions the cultural contribution adopted in the media agreement earlier this year, which, according to the government, means almost DKK 100 million per year from 2025 for film, series and documentaries.

‘It's good and crucial that more money is now being allocated to Danish film. We had hoped that politicians would introduce a transitional scheme so that the extra support from streaming services could start working now, because the crisis in the Danish production environment is serious. But overall, we are very satisfied with the film agreement, which in the long term will ensure a more sustainable film industry that produces strong, broad and audience-friendly films,’ says Allan Mathson Hansen.

Nordisk Film would also have liked to see the media spokespersons commit to discussing a production rebate with their business spokesperson colleagues in order to find a solution. Together with Luxembourg, Denmark is now the only country in Europe that does not have a production rebate, which countries with comparable cultural support schemes also have.  

“Our industry suffers greatly from the fact that Denmark is the only EU country without a production tax rebate, which means that we are not chosen as a production country by the large foreign media companies. This means loss of jobs, loss of cultural branding of Denmark, and no funding for Danish content. We very much hope that colleagues across the Danish Parliament will soon find a solution that a united industry is calling for,” says Allan Mathson Hansen.    

Egmont is Denmark's largest media group and is behind Nordisk Film, Story House Egmont and Lindhardt & Ringhof as well as Cappelen Damm and TV 2 in Norway.