Exclusive: Austria is expected to re-open its popular FISAplus incentive portal for production applications from next month having been closed since early this year.
“The change of government meant the process for re-opening took a little longer. But FISAplus is expected to be available again to local and international productions with new guidelines in place, including that projects which apply for more than €1.5m funding have to go through us to discuss the project,” Nina-Anica Keidies, film commissioner at FILM in AUSTRIA, tells TLG.com.
The Ministries of economy and finance are currently finalizing the details of the new guidelines, following an evaluation of the FISAplus incentive and of the Austrian Film Institute.
FILM in AUSTRIA monitors and supports international projects applying for FISAplus, which offers a 30% rebate, plus an additional 5% ‘green bonus’ for productions that follow environmental sustainability criteria. Maximum funding is set at €5m per film and €7.5m per series. Productions can also get gender gap financing (up to €25,000) if they have a certain number of female heads of departments.
“Productions can also access the FISAplus incentive even if they don’t film in Austria and just do post-production work here,” adds Keidies.
Austria also offers additional national funding opportunities such as the Austrian Film Institute, as well as several region funds that can be combined with the national incentives. These have helped attract a number of major productions recently, including Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth, Jaume Collet-Serra’s Cliffhanger reboot, HBO series The Regime, starring Kate Winslet, and Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers with Nicole Kidman.
Indeed, the FISAplus incentive supported 162 projects with a total of €144m in funding, involving 3,895 shooting days in Austria, through 2023 and 2024, and €465m in economic impact generated for the country’s economy.
Projects have also been drawn to the variety of locations and striking architecture all within a short distance of each other. For example, Fountain of Youth filmed in Vienna, including such sites as the National Library, Heldenplatz, Schwarzenbergplatz, the Hotel Imperial and the city’s underground canal system. While Nine Perfect Strangers was in Salzburg and Hallstatt (among other places) and the Cliffhanger reboot filmed in November in the Lienz Dolomites mountain range (and also secured funding from Cine Tirol Film Commission).
Vienna is also expanding its studio offerings with the new HQ7 Studios and the Virtual Production Studio Vienna.
Image: HBO's The Regime filmed in Austria
