01-06-2009

Romanian-French co-production agreement

By Iulia Blaga

    Romania signed a new co-production agreement with France at Cannes film festival, replacing a previous agreement dating back to 1966.

    The main change in the agreement signed by the Ministers of Culture of both countries, Theodor Paleologu and Christine Albanel, is the percentage of financial contribution of the co-producers, between 20% and 80%. In the old agreement, co-producers had a 30-70% range, based on the final cost of the project

    With the consent of both the parties, in some cases the threshold of 20% could descent to 10%, depending on the technical and artistic personel contributions the co-producers.

    A new agreement was necessary to encourage co-production partnerships, especially with smaller Romanian co-producers who were unable to raise the larger amounts of money specified in the former agreement.