23/09/2015 - It is “a sign of respect for the good work that the Copenhagen Film Fund has done”, according to the city’s mayor of culture

The City of Copenhagen has doubled its funding of the Copenhagen Film Fund, allocating €2 million in the 2016 budget for the fund to invest in attracting international film and TV productions in order to create further growth and jobs in the metropolitan region.

“It is a lot of money, and it is a sign of respect for the good work the Copenhagen Film Fund has done to bring foreign films to the area,” said Copenhagen’s mayor of culture, Carl Christian Jeppesen. “The majority of the city council accepts that the support will return several times to benefit the whole capital.” Jeppesen is negotiating with other investors to provide another €2 million for the coming year. 

The fund has recently backed British director Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Delgado
film profile], starring Alicia Vikander and Eddie Redmayne, and Norwegian director Roar Uthaug’s The Wave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile], launched as the first disaster movie from the Nordic countries. While The Danish Girl has just screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival, they were both on show at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.

Instigated in 2013, the fund has also contributed to The Bridge, the Swedish-Danish thriller now in its third season, produced by Sweden’s FilmLance International and Denmark’s Nimbus Film, for SVT and DR; the UK’s adaptation of the Wallander series, starring Kenneth Branagh as Henning Mankell’s detective, for the BBC; and the UK’s Midsomer Murders, following DCI Tom Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) in an episode set in Copenhagen, for ITV.

A report from the Copenhagen Economics Research Institute has concluded that every euro the fund has invested in incoming productions has returned between €3.50 and €6.00 to the region, so far totalling between €13 million and €20 million. “Our goal is to be involved in still more international productions, to contribute both to further growth and employment in the region, and to the development of the Danish film industry,” explained the fund’s CEO, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen.