Mission structure ends today but Portugal Film Commission is to continue
The Portugal Film Commission (PFC) ends its functions today as a mission structure, but the Government guarantees that it will continue in 2023, although the future operating model is unknown.
The PFC was created in 2019 as a project group aimed at promoting the country “as an international film production destination” and proposing a definitive model for a future Portugal Film Commission, among other objectives.
This mission structure lasted for three years – from May 2019 to May 2022 – but an extension was approved until the end of this year, for various reasons, including the lead of the State Budget for 2021 and the elections advance legislation.
Questioned last week by the Lusa agency, an official source from the Ministry of Culture said that “who defines the model to be adopted is the Government, which is committed to a structured and definitive solution, a solution that is being oriented to replace the project group currently existing, which by its nature is limited in time”.
Regarding what will happen to the PFC from January 1st, the same source indicated that “it will be announced in due course”. “The PFC will maintain its activity, so the initiatives will continue, since they were never suspended”, said the ministry supervised by Pedro Adão e Silva.
Last week, a few days after the end of activity, the executive director of the PFC, Sandra Neves, said, in an interview with the Lusa agency, that she had no information about the continuity or cessation of activity.
About the three years of activity, Sandra Neves said that the PFC “was a clearly successful project”, in the sense that it managed to put Portugal on the map of international filming destinations.
The work of the PFC was also articulated with the Support Fund for Tourism and Cinema, with a financial incentive mechanism to support Portuguese and foreign film and audiovisual productions, which in May exhausted its annual allocation of 12 million Euros. euros.
In order to respond to the 28 applications that had to be excluded from this fund due to lack of funds, the Government announced, on 21 December, an increase of 10.9 million euros. For 2023, the endowment of that fund will be 14 million euros.
As it was the last year of surveillance for that fund – which came into operation in 2018 – the Ministry of Culture asked for an impact study, “both from an economic and tourism point of view, and from the perspective of the cinema and audiovisual sector”.
Based on the results of this study, the Government “will consider – possibly in the second quarter of 2023 – reviewing the support mechanism”, so “the new phase of applications for the fund will be opened based on a model that reflects the results of the evaluation “.