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FUNDING Romania

The Romanian National Film Center announces grants for 2016

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- The first project contest of the year will support new films with €6.7 million

The Romanian National Film Center announces grants for 2016

Amidst a flurry of announcements and changes ordered by the new Romanian Minister of Culture, Vlad Alexandrescu (read the news), the country’s National Film Center is organising the first grant contest of 2016. The session will divide €6.7 million among fiction features, first features, documentaries and short films. Screenplays in development will also be supported by the institution.

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The lion’s share (approximately €3.97 million) is destined for feature-length fiction projects, while first features will receive a total of €1 million. €337,000 will go to short-film projects, €674,000 to documentaries and €67,000 to screenplays in development. 

The deadline for entering the competition is 28 March, and the winners will be announced at the beginning of May or later, depending on the number of screenplays battling it out.

The grant contest has already been marred by controversy. As the new statute of the Center is set to be announced in June, the contest will still observe the old, obsolete, regulations. One of them, an order issued by the Center in November 2014, enraged first-time producers, as it stipulates that short films will not be considered as experience for producers eyeing a grant for a feature. In a system where projects receive points according to the directors’ and producers’ previous successes and the quality of the screenplay, first-time producers are at a disadvantage because they do not receive points for their short films. 

Since November 2014, no debuting producer has ever won a grant for a feature, which caused producers Paul Negoescu, Claudiu Mitcu, Codruţa Creţulescu, Radu Stancu, Ioana Lascăr, Gabriela Suciu, Iuliana Tarnoveţchi, Anamaria Antoci and Irina Malcea to protest in an open letter sent to Minister Alexandrescu.

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