September 16 – 19, 2019 Hyatt Regency Kyiv, Ukraine
Despite lots of economic and political turbulent issues in Ukraine during the last two years the local audiovisual industry is now on the rise. Film and TV content production companies enhance quantity and improve quality of content they are producing. At the same time the government this year managed to bring back to life film production support scheme that was frozen for more than a year because of funding shortage. So Ukrainian producers were granted more than $3 million to finish their projects.
The burning problem of existing production support scheme in Ukraine is that there hasn’t been any independent mechanism of financing content production yet. There is only direct support from the state through Ukrainian State Film Agency for certain feature films, documentaries and animated projects. TV content production is not supported by the state at all. Moreover, there are no tax incentives or cash rebates for foreign producers that could attract them to film in Ukraine.
In order to change the current situation and to discover Ukraine as a powerful production hub (with well-developed production facilities, qualified and skillful crews and technical specialists, lots of picturesque and unique shooting locations, and of course dramatically low costs of production) for foreign producers, the largest Ukrainian TV and film production companies united around an incentive scheme for the local film industry entitled #KinoKraina (Ukr: #КіноКраїна, aka ‘FilmCountry’). This project is implemented in proposed law “On the state support of the cinematography in Ukraine” № 3081-d, registered in the Ukrainian Parliament on November 27 2015. The main goal of #KinoKraina initiative is to implement rebates for international film production in Ukraine and reform film production legislation of the country in general in order to create good co-production climate in Ukraine.
On the local level the #KinoKraina proposes to start supporting TV producers and to increase state support of the industry to $250 million for a 5-year period. It will lead to creating at least 75 feature films and more than 5,000 episodes of locally produced TV-series of a high quality. As a result of #KinoKraina initiative implementation the share of Ukrainian-produced releases in country’s cinema box-office will increase from current miserable 2% to at least 20-25%. And the share of locally-made TV series in the air of Ukrainian broadcasters will triple (according to Media Resources Management research, in 2014 the share of Ukrainian TV series on TOP-10 TV channels was 5%, while 6% was the share of Russian-Ukrainian co-productions).
From the international point of view #KinoKraina scheme implementation will allow foreign producers to payback up to 25% production costs spent on the territory of Ukraine due to new finance-rebate system.
Now it is obvious that Ukraine is rather interesting to the world and lots of production teams from abroad are looking for cooperation possibilities with Ukrainian colleagues. One of the latest examples is new adventure-fantasy Polina by the French-Belgian director Olias Barco - a coproduction of Belgian film company Wild Tribe Films and Ukrainian FILM.UA Group. Filming process finished on December 2nd and took place in Kyiv on the stages of FILM.UA Studio. The project is produced in English. The film budget totals €2 million, and its premiere is planned for 2016.
It is the story of a little girl who travels across the movie screen, where fairy-tale characters live and terrible secrets are hidden. 11 year old Polina, who knows nothing about her parents, lives in her wicked aunt’s house. Her aunt is going to get rid of the girl on her birthday to lay hands on Polina’s mysterious heritage. Trying to escape from the villains, Polina sets off on a magical journey full of danger and adventures in search of truth about her family.
Famous French director of photography Thierry Arbogast, known for his collaboration with Luc Besson on such films as The Fifth Element and Lucy, is behind the camera. Bright international cast includes Ukrainian young actress Polina Pechenenko, Saul Rubinek, Audrey Marnay, Virgile Bramly, Wim Willaert, Daniel Cohen, Yana Novikova and Severija Janusauskaite. The movie is being produced by Olias Barco, Dennis Ivanov, Egor Olesov and Yuriy Prylypko.
There are many more interesting and high-potential international projects in production. For instance, this autumn Czech film company Wilhelm Creative Center started working on new feature drama Autumn Memories in co-production with Ukrainian and Iranian prodcos. At the same time Ukrainian film director Jean Daniel Zacharias started working on new feature mystical drama about world-famous architect Gorodetskiy that is planned to become a Ukrainian-Polish co-production. Ukrainian director Akhtem Seitablaev is developing new war drama Her Heart (negotiations on co-production with the Georgian filmmakers are underway). Fresh Production (Ukraine), Aktis Film Production (Germany), Geopoly Film (Bulgaria) and O-Studio (Georgia) have feature drama Ursus in post-production.
This summer Odessa Film Studio filmed feature thriller Paramnesia in coproduction with the US prodco UAllywood Productions. Also Ukrainian director Lubomir Levitsky is preparing new feature detective thriller entitled Egregor in co-production with Canadian filmmaker (the project is currently in pre-production). Moreover, world-known Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytsky is working on his second (after The Tribe) feature drama – Luxembourg – the co-production of Ukrainian Garmata Film Production, French Alpha Violet, and German Tandem Communications with the support of The Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (Netherlands).
As we see, Ukraine is open to the world and the world is ready to discover Ukraine. There’s no doubt that reforms in audiovisual sector can lead Ukraine to TOP-5 most attractive locations in Central and Eastern Europe. The only question remains is how long will it take to Ukrainian authorities to give “green light” to boost Ukrainian production sector.
We truly hope that most of above mentioned issues will settle down by the VI edition of KYIV MEDIA WEEK (September 19-23, 2016), and representatives of Ukrainian TV and movie industry will be able to sit at the round table altogether with their foreign colleagues and discuss new opportunities that will open for all of them in case of current situation’s positive outcome.
Organizer:
