Federal subsidy coin has backed a slew of recent international productions including Stephen Daldry's Oscar-winning 'The Reader.'
BERLIN -- Germany may have to retool its entire federal film subsidy program after a federal court in Leipzig ruled on Thursday that the funding levies provided by theatrical exhibs, home entertainment distribs and TV broadcasters are unconstitutional.
Currently, the law states that theater owners must pay the country's main film funding body, the German Federal Film Board (FFA), between 1.8% and 3% for each cinema screen as long as gross annual revenues exceed E75,000 ($96,000).
About $22 million of the FFA's annual $90 million budget comes from exhibs. Video distribs fork over between 1.8% and 2.3% of net annual sales.
However, there is no such law setting out what pubcasters and commercial broadcasters must pay. They make non-mandatory contribution of varying amounts according to individual agreements with the FFA.
The court took issue with this inequality. Requirements must be equal for all the FFA's sponsors, the court said, demanding that lawmakers force TV broadcasters to pay their equal share.
Public and commercial TV broadcasters as well as exhibs and video distribs benefit equally from film funding, the court added, pointing out that the constitutional tenet of fairness for duties and levies demands that all members of a common group be held to the same standards.
Nine theatrical exhibs had sued the FFA and the 40-year-old levy law, which theater owners have long described as unconstitutional since cultural policy in Germany must be set at the state rather than federal level.
The court has transferred the case to the Federal Constitutional Court for review.
Federal subsidy coin has backed a slew of recent international productions including Stephen Daldry's Oscar-winning "The Reader"; Lukas Moodysson's "Mammoth," starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams; Paul Schrader's "Adam Resurrected"; and Michael Hoffman's upcoming Leo Tolstoy biopic "The Last Station," starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. German box office hits of the past year include Uli Edel's "The Baader Meinhof Complex" and Til Schweiger's romantic comedy "Keinohrhasen" (Rabbit Without Ears).
Contact Ed Meza at
ed.meza@mannaa.de