Goteborg, Rotterdam & IDFA Festivals Receive Creative Europe Funding

The International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Goteborg Film Festival and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) are among the festivals benefiting from Creative Europe’s annual grants, totalling €1.62 million ($1.91 million).

Creative Europe is the European Commission’s program to support the culture and audiovisual sectors. The organization provides support in two stages. Action 1 awards European audiovisual festivals taking place in countries participating in Creative Europe’s MEDIA sub-program. The expectation is that the award amount will stimulate the recipient festivals to enlarge the audience and circulation for European films.

Action 2 is aimed at increasing the effectiveness and professionalization of European networks of festivals, with the aim of increasing the promotion and circulation of European films to growing audiences across Europe.

The largest amounts are reserved for Action 2. This year’s biggest grant of €180,000 ($213,120) was given to the European Children’s Film Festival Network, while the Doc Alliance was close behind, receiving a grant of €179,688 ($212,768). Moving Images Open Borders received €141,600 ($167,663).

Among the film festivals, Sweden’s Goteborg Film Festival, which presented a gender-equal program this year with half the films directed by women and the other half by men, received the largest grant of €75,000 ($88,790). Receiving €63,000 ($74,607) each was the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH:DOX – the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, Nordische Filmtage Lübeck, IDFA, Sofia International Film Festival, Seville European Film Festival and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

Creative Europe’s €1.62 million ($1.91 million) pot of funding was distributed to 34 film festivals in total.

The MEDIA sub-program of Creative Europe supports the European Union film and audiovisual industries financially in the development, distribution and promotion of their work. It helps to launch projects with a European dimension and nurtures new technologies. It also enables European films and audiovisual works including feature films, television drama, documentaries and new media to find markets beyond national and European borders, and it funds training and film development schemes.