Films from small countries like Croatia face strong competition for audiences’ attention, and this competition affects what kind of films are produced and what we watch in cinemas. The European research project “CresCine” investigates the strengths and challenges of films in small countries.
Investigating the challenges of small film producing markets in Europe
The research project “CresCine” investigates the challenges faced by small film-producing markets in Europe. Manuel Damásio from Lusófona University in Lisbon leads the project which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme . The project’s starting point is the economic and cultural significance of local film industries in seven small countries and regions: Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Portugal, Croatia, and Flanders in Belgium. The project’s new research report called “Small European Film Markets: Portraits and Comparisons” tracks their development from 2014 to 2022, considering factors such as production volume, funding patterns, availability in VoD catalogues and admissions.
The report traces the development of the seven small markets across a period that has seen the expansion of global streaming services, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic downturn on film production as well as cinemas. What all seven markets have in common is that a domestic audience is too small to sustain a local film industry. What differs are their strategies for addressing this key challenge.
Croatia: moderate festival success between a strong incentive program and a weak domestic market
Like Ireland, Croatia has a strong incentive program for service productions, which continuously attracts foreign productions and contributes to the export volume. Comparatively speaking, Croatia has a low level of public film funding, only slightly above Lithuania and Estonia. Available data show that cinema attendance in Croatia is generally low (an average of 0.9 visits per inhabitant), which can partly be attributed to the high price of tickets, but also to the limitations of the screening infrastructure. In the period 2014-2022, the domestic market continuously has low shares in the total attendance (similar to Portugal), but in the last few years an increase can be seen. Croatian films achieve moderate success at international festivals, but are not often screened in cinemas outside the country, while their presence in VoD catalogs has only begun to increase in recent years.
You can read the entire news on the following link, and the report on the website of the CresCine project.
