Slovak Audiovisual Fund Opens TV Minority Co-Productions
The Board of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund (AVF) has approved new conditions for obtaining subsidies for audiovisual works and has also published calls for proposals for the year 2017.
Some novelties were proposed by the AVF Director Martin Šmatlák and were based on an intensive debate with experts from Slovakia and professional and film fund representatives from other neighbouring countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
The programme for the creation and production of audiovisual works involves two basic open calls for the animation industry.
Productions with majority participation by a Slovak author or producer can apply for support for the development or production. The maximum amount of subsidies for the development of an audiovisual work is €50,000 whereas subsidy for the production can go up to €1.2 million.
AVF has also decided to include animated films intended primarily for TV broadcasting (especially TV series) in the call for projects with minority Slovak co-production. This arrangement initiated by APAF (Slovak Association of Animated Film Producers) is a result of negotiations with fellow film funds on the VAF (Visegrad Animation Forum) platform.
The maximum amount of subsidies allocated to producing a co-production in which a Slovak co-producer has a minority share is €300,000 provided the project is already financed at least up to 60%.
Michal Podhradský, the chairman of VAF, explains: "We invited the heads of the national film funds from the CEE countries to discuss the possibility of harmonizing different country-specific criteria. In some countries, the film funds were not even accepting TV series projects or were only supporting national majority projects focused on TV. This was the case for example in Slovakia. We are delighted by this great first move for easier cross boarder cooperation in our region."
"We are happy that the director of the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, Martin Šmatlák, is the first to have taken a concrete step to meet our needs by opening the funding scheme for minority co-productions of TV-series in 2017", explains Juraj Krasnohorsky, Slovak producer, director and member of APAF.
VAF is striving for more CEE countries to open up similar calls for both minority and majority co-productions of animated TV series – in late 2017 mainly across the region – in order to make reciprocity and partnering among CEE producers more accessible. The total amount preliminarily allocated to support audiovisual culture in Slovakia in 2017 is being raised to € 7,000,000.
For further inquiries about the possibilities of co-production with Slovakia, contact the Slovak Association of Animated Film Producers (
