Call for Applications: European Film Distribution

Objectives

• The general objectives of the Programme are:
  • To safeguard, develop and promote European cultural and linguistic diversity and heritage;
  • To increase the competitiveness and the economic potential of the cultural and creative sectors, in particular the audiovisual sector.

Themes

• The Media strand shall provide support for the following measures:
  • Support to international sales and circulation of non-national European works on all platforms (e.g. cinema theatres, online) targeting both small and largesized productions, including through coordinated distribution strategies covering several countries and encouraging the use of subtitling, dubbing and where applicable, audio description tools.

Funding Information

• The estimated available call budget is EUR 32000000.
• Projects should normally range between 12 and 24 months.

Eligible Activities

• There are two phases for the funded activities:
  • The generation of a potential fund which will be attributed according to the performance of the company on the European market.
  • The implementation of the action – the potential fund thus generated by each company must be reinvested in:
    • The co-production of eligible non-national European films;
    • The acquisition of distribution rights, for example by means of minimum guarantees, of eligible non-national European films;
    • Promotion, marketing and advertising on the market of eligible non-national European films both for theatrical and online releases

Eligible Projects

• Projects must comply with:
  • Highest ethical standards
  • Applicable EU, international and national law
  • They may not include pornographic or racist material or advocate violence.

Eligibility Criteria

• In order to be eligible, the applicants (beneficiaries and affiliated entities) must:
  • Be legal entities (public or private bodies)
  • Be established in one of the eligible countries, i.e.
  • Creative Europe Participating Countries:
    • EU Member States (including overseas countries and territories (OCTs)
  • Non-EU countries:
    • Listed EEA countries and countries associated to the Creative Europe Programme
• Be established in one of the countries participating in the MEDIA strand of the Creative Europe Programme and be owned directly or indirectly, wholly or by majority participation, by nationals from such countries. When a company is publicly listed, the location of the stock exchange will in principle determine its nationality;
• Be European companies active in the audiovisual sector as cinema / theatrical distributor involved in commercial activity designed to bring to the attention of a wide audience a film for the purpose of exploitation in cinema theatres. This shall be the principal activity of the company or division of the company.
• The cinema / theatrical distributor shall fulfil the following criteria:
  • Be the holder of the theatrical distribution rights for the film in the country concerned;
  • Carry out the theatrical distribution of the film in the country concerned (determine the release date, plan, control and execute the distribution and promotion campaign);
  • Pay directly the associated distribution costs;
  • Have theatrical distribution operations in the country concerned.

Evaluation Criteria

• The proposals will have to follow the standard submission and evaluation procedure (one-stage submission + one-step evaluation).
• An evaluation committee will assess all applications. Proposals will first be checked for formal requirements (admissibility, and eligibility). Proposals found admissible and eligible will be evaluated (for each topic) against the operational capacity and award criteria and then ranked according to their scores.
• For proposals with the same score (within a topic) a priority order will be determined according to the following approach:
  • Successively for every group of ex aequo proposals, starting with the highest scored group, and continuing in descending order:
    • The ex aequo proposals within the same topic will be prioritised according to the scores they have been awarded for the award criterion ‘Relevance’. When these scores are equal, priority will be based on their scores for the criterion ‘Dissemination’. When these scores are equal, priority will be based on their scores for the criterion ‘Quality of content and activities’.
• All proposals will be informed about the evaluation result (evaluation result letter). Successful proposals will be invited for grant preparation; other ones will be put on the reserve list or rejected.

For more information, visit European Commission.