During the Press Conference held yesterday, in the presence of Lampis Tagmatarchis (CEO of Public Radio and Television Broadcaster ERT) and the committee of the 1.5%* it was announced that 1.5 million euros will be given to 22 films in the frame of the restart of Greek Cinema funding after four years of pause. 

Mr. Tagmatarchis and the members of the funding committee, President Elli Papakonstantinou, Vice President Michel Demopoulos and members Kyriaki Malama, Zinovia Sasloglou, Menos Deliotzakis, Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Ioanna Spiliopoulou convened and decided to fund 22 out of 33 submitted films in various production stages, giving in total 1.5 million euros. This amount of money will be distributed to the following directors. Rinio Dragasaki, Vicky Vellopoulou, Chryssa Tzelepi – Akis Kersanides, Nikos Vergitsis, Konstantis Fragopoulos, Sofia Exarchou, Yorgos Gkikapeppas, Argyris Papadimitropoulos, Kyriakos Katzourakis, Stergios Paschos, Elina Psykou, Vassilis Mazomenos, Toni Lykouresis, Marsa Makris, Eleni Alexandraki, Babis Makridis, Nikos Soulis, Yannis Sakaridis, Dora Masklavanou, Andreas Morfonios, Karolos Zonaras and Christos Georgiou.

Each year 2.6 million euros will be spent for the Greek cinema. There is still 1.1 million euros to be spent during 2016 which means that there will be more approvals in the summer, while previously rejected film submissions will be re-evaluated in case of improvements and changes regarding some parameters. 

The popular short films funding program MICROFILM is reactivated headed by Menos Deliotzaksi, while in the next days there will be the first call for submissions. This is a very important step for short films filmmakers, who mostly shoot their movies entirely independently facing huge difficulties. 

Furthermore, Mr. Deliotzakis stated that MICROFILM and the Mediterranean Film Institute will continue their successful collaboration in the frame of the script development.

It should also be mentioned that among the approved films, there were also some movies that were about to get funding just before the shutting down of ERT in 2011.

The 1.5% finally concerns also documentary films (3 out of the 22 films mentioned above are documentaries).

Finally, as stated by ERT president Mr. Tsaknis, all greek films will get Media Sponsorship from ERT, an offer to the independent producers.

*The ERT S.A. is required to provide each year 1.5% of the annual turnover for the production of films that qualify for reinforcement under the provisions Article 3 of this law. The annual turnover includes the administrative charge.