Written by Tom Deehan on Jan 14, 2016. Posted in Incentive News

Applications are now open for Estonia’s new film incentive

Estonia’s brand new cash rebate programme is now in operation and ready to receive applications for 2016. The incentive offers a competitive cash rebate of up to 30%, with a varying required minimum spend such as the EUR1 million set for feature films and the EUR2 million set for full-length animated films.

With 2016 being the initial testing period for the incentive, the budget is capped at EUR600,000 but will increase to EUR2 million the following year. There will be four periods of submission throughout 2016, with deadlines on February 9^th, March 29^th, May 24^th and November 8^th.

When initially detailing the incentive, Edith Sepp the Director of the Estonian Film Institute explained: “if you want the 30% rebate, you will need to engage more local creative members in the production’s crew and they have to be Estonians residing in the country.”

It should be noted that this is not the first funding programme offered in Estonia for productions filming on location. The Tartu and Viru film funds are already available with an annual budget of EUR150,000 and EUR50,000 respectively. The former offers up to a 20% tax rebate and the latter is up for negotiation but without an application deadline.

Estonia hosts a fair amount of regional and international productions, particularly from central Europe but the country has yet to truly make an impact with English-language films. This trend is likely to change with the introduction of the cash rebate this year.

The upcoming historical drama The Rising is currently being filmed on location in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city. The film is an Irish-American production and is set to be released March 17^th 2016.