Building sustainable film businesses: the challenges for industry

MDA finance is finite and projects have to compete 

for limited resources. The organisation has not 

announced the value of funds available under each 

of the five schemes, instead stating that the size of 

the cash pools would be ‘dynamic’. 

National Level Support   

Unlike nearly every other film aid scheme, the MDA 

Grant Schemes do not just cover production but 

also development (usually the riskiest area of any 

creative enterprise) and marketing the finished 

product. Unusually, they do not just cover film 

and TV but also games, interactive digital content, 

music and publishing. MDA pays anything between 

S$5,000 and $S200,000 to help develop a project;  

the agency will provide grant finance for up to 40% 

of Singapore expenditure and provide a further 

bonus of 10 per cent if the beneficiary company 

starts production within the following 12 months. 

Regional Support   

Singapore is a unitary City State, and does not 

have regions which are comparable with the other 

countries studied.

Role of Broadcasters    

Singapore’s broadcasters do not appear to play a 

significant role in film production.

Key Conclusions    

The new MDA scheme is less than one year old, and 

has yet to announce any investments through the 

new five-prong structure; given past criticism about 

lack of oversight with its previous funding initiatives, 

however, officials are likely to be cautious about 

what they invest in. In spite of the circumstances 

which led to its creation, the initiative to provide 

seed funding for company development as opposed 

to solely providing project finance appears to be a 

laudable one, and fits many of the recommended 

criteria for a scheme to develop sustainable 

production companies.

Section 12.0  

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  Appendices

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the challenges for industry and government

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Section 12.0  

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  Appendices

12.6 

Sweden

Summary

Country indicators:

OUTPUT 

Production volume 2011 (€m)  

23.7

Number of films 2011 

21

Average budget 2011 (€m) 

2.6

Domestic film share, 2011 (%) 

19.8

Note: these production figures refer only to films with selective SFI 

funding. It is estimated that this accounts for between half and  

three-quarters of all Swedish films released.

Country Approach

The Swedish system is based on a long-standing 

voluntary agreement by exhibitors, more recently 

joined by broadcasters, to fund the Swedish Film 

Institute (SFI), which provides a mixture of selective 

funding and automatic box office rewards to 

support the production of Swedish films. There is  

no national scheme to develop production 

companies, but regional agency Film i Väst plays  

an important role both in production finance  

and company support. 

National Level Support 

The SFI has been responsible for the support and 

development of the national film industry and 

culture since 1963. Its primary funding comes 

from the Film Agreement, a voluntary contract 

between the State, film exhibitors, broadcasters 

and other industry stakeholders (i.e., producers 

and distributors), which is renegotiated every few 

years. The bedrock of the Film Agreement is a 10 

per cent levy on cinema tickets, plus a fixed annual 

contribution by broadcasters; in addition, the 

government provides around 50 per cent of the 

total. The Film Agreement typically provides the 

SFI with a budget of around €40 million a year, of 

which about €27.5 million is invested in production 

via either selective or automatic schemes. The SFI 

also receives a separate government grant to fund 

cultural activities, such as festivals and archives, 

worth around €13 million a year.

The SFI operates an automatic reward system based 

on box office, called the PRS. Swedish films that pass 

the box office threshold of SEK2.5 million (€275,000) 

are eligible to receive a PRS payment of between 50-

100 per cent of their gross, up to a maximum of SEK9 

million (€990,000) or 65 per cent of their Swedish 

equity, whichever is lower. At current ticket prices, 

this maximum payment is reached at about 160,000 

admissions. Children’s films receive 100 per cent of 

the box office, films with no advance funding from 

SFI receive 75 per cent, and films with advance SFI 

funding receive 50 per cent. The total annual budget 

of PRS is capped at SEK75 million (€8.25 million). 

In 2008/9, the SFI used an unspent surplus from its 

PRS budget to launch an experimental ‘market’ fund, 

which offered a semi-automatic advance for films 

in pre-production, filming or not yet released, using 

a points system based on the producer’s previous 

track record of box office success. The fund backed 

11 films, but is no longer open because the PRS 

surplus has been used up. 

From January 2013 the Swedish Film Institute 

will have its budget raised by SEK30 million (€3.4 

million) – half from the state – to reach a total of 

SEK380 million (€43 million). Part of the extra money 

is earmarked for television drama, children’s film and 

shorts and documentaries, while for the first time 

Swedish films aimed at DVD or digital distribution 

were allowed public funding. 

The SFI provides selective funding for production 

in the form of soft loans, recouped from net 

profits. These are awarded by the SFI board on the 

recommendation of five film commissioners – two 

for features, one for children’s films, one for shorts 

and one for documentaries. Decisions are based on 

a balance between artistic and commercial factors, 

while the total level of selective funding varies 

according to the SFI’s income from the cinema levy, 

but is typically around €19 million a year, including 

€13 million for features and €3.3 million for  

children’s films.

Selective funding was awarded to 15 films in 2010, 

down from 21 films in 2009, when the SFI funded a 

larger number of low-budget budgets - the Institute 

is now trying to concentrate its funding on a smaller 

volume of higher quality projects. At the same time, 

the number of Swedish films being made without 

any SFI funding is growing; although precise long-

term figures are not available, out of 77 Swedish 

films released from 2008-10, 17 had no advance 

funding from the SFI. 

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