Germany

Ahead of this year’s Berlinale, Claudia Roth, Germany’s state minister for culture and the media, unveiled a three-point strategy to complement a revamped German Film Law coming into effect from 2025. The changes would see the existing DFFF and GMPF incentive programmes replaced by two new financial instruments: a tax incentive and an investment obligation to be imposed on streamers and other VoD services. “Policy makers appear to be heading in the right direction with  Germany’s production incentives, making them more stable and more predictable,” says Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association. “Locking in that improvement is a very smart move for Germany.”

However, international streamers and local broadcasters were united in their opposition to the idea of an investment obligation, with Wolf Osthaus, Netflix’s senior director public policy — DACH,Benelux & Nordics, claiming it would not be “ t for purpose to bring more production to Germany. The risk is that the investment obligation becomes the millstone around the neck of the tax incentive, and, with that, we drown the whole industry.”

Despite concerns that Germany is currently losing out to other territories, its locations and studios continue to attract numerous international productions. MMC Studios in Cologne hosted David Lowery’s melodrama Mother Mary, Joshua  Oppenheimer’s musical The End and Fleur Fortuné’s debut feature The Assessment, while Penzing Studios, west of Munich, was busy in 2023 with productions as diverse as Christophe Gans’ horror reboot Return To Silent Hill and Bora Dagtekin’s comedy Chantal In Fairyland, as well as making preparations for the second season of Prime Video’s Nine Perfect Strangers and a sequel to the Sylvester Stallone actioner Cliffhanger coming this summer. 

Meanwhile, Wes Anderson returned to Studio Babelsberg in the spring of 2024 to shoot his latest feature The Phoenician Scheme, having filmed a number of his previous features there. Robert Schwentke’s action thriller Control, starring James McAvoy, will also be filming at Studio Babelsberg this  summer for Studio canal and The Picture Company. 

A saturated market for series, strikes in Hollywood and the retreat from production by some streaming services such as Sky had a major impact on the German Motion Picture Fund (GMPF) in 2023. After reaching an all-time high of $90.3m (€84.4m) being paid out to 43 high-end series in 2022, the fund supported only 22 projects (just seven being international co-productions) with a total of $48m (€44.8m). The maximum amount possible to allocate to a single project under the scheme — $10.7m (€10m) — went to Prime Video series Nine Perfect Strangers starring Nicole Kidman.

 In 2023, Berlin hosted Trailer Park Boys and Billy Bob Thornton for filming, as well as M SS N G P ECES who filmed "empowering interviews for sporty young women across the globe," says Mortimer Cerny, casting producer at Berlin-based Shotz.

First person to contact: Anja Geissen, DFFF funding consultant — geissen@ffa.de

Germany is proving resilient thanks largely to its world-class studios, film-friendly approach and wide array of locations, including its historic capital. The Hunger Games prequel made use of monuments like the Völkerschlachtdenkmal monument in Leipzig and the Tieranatomisches Theatre.

Germany has a lot of diversity to offer, from coastline to picturesque landscapes with lots of forest and mountain. Also German cities and towns are surprisingly varied.

It's worth noting though that Germany is a federal country and the rules in every state and town are different, so sometimes permits from several authorities are needed for just one location.

German locations are also being lined up for Zentropa’s period drama King’s Land by Nikolaj Arcel, with Mads Mikkelsen in the lead.

International projects often source many of their heads of department locally when shooting in Germany. Studio Babelsberg (Potsdam), Bavaria Studios (Munich) and MMC Studios (Cologne) were joined in 2022 by Penzing Studios, a facility 30 miles west of Munich. The former Berliner Union Film Studios has now been transformed into Atelier Gardens, a home for green and sustainable filmmaking. On the equipment side, there is Camera Crew Germany, a one-stop-shop for English-speaking camera crews in Germany.

"Main hubs like Berlin, Hamburg and Munich offer multicultural and diverse pools of talents when casting," says Mortimer Cerny, casting producer at Berlin-based Shotz. "With its position in the centre of Europe, transportation between neighbouring countries becomes very easy. 

"Being home to some of the worlds leading filming equipment manufactures such as ARRI and Zeiss, there are many rental houses located throughout the country, that carry even the most obscure and rare equipment in stock," he says. 

He adds: "Germany's film industry is highly developed and offers crew that has been trained on Hollywood sets, which makes it great for international productions looking to shoot abroad." 

Germany is also home to Theaterkunst, Europe's leading costume store founded in 1907 with offices in Berlin, Cologne, Penzing, Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. They pride themselves on "excellent customer service" and offer "one of the largest selection of costumes, uniforms, and accessories from all eras. New trends are also represented with a passion, as is the historically correct implementation of a costume," says Andrea Peters, Managing Director of Theaterkunst GmbH.

While the country’s filming hubs are no more than an hour apart by air, shoots must now meet mandatory minimum ecological standards before being able to access public funds. Studio Babelsberg, Bavaria Studios, MMC Studios and Penzing Studios are all less than an hour’s drive from their respective city centre hotels.