Italy’s Minister of Culture Vows to Support the Film Industry

Italy’s Minister of Culture claims that he has been “passionate” about cinema his whole life. 

Gennaro Sangiuliano, a former Rai executive who was appointed culture minister by right-wing Premier Giorgia Meloni in 2022, said he plans to keep investing heavily in grants to the Venice Film Festival, and through a generous program of tax credits he also wants to promote Italy to international producers.  

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Sangiuliano said he is satisfied with Italy’s investment of nearly $800 million a year in a program of tax credits and selective grants for TV and film producers. When it emerged last year that some Italian producers had been abusing the system, Sangiuliano took steps to tighten the rules. But the fund is still large, and it provides producers with up to 40 percent of the production budget of many films shot in Italian territory. 

As Scott Roxborough and Giammaria Tammaro reported in THR on August 27, under the newest Italian government rules, international co-productions will face an €18 million ($19.7 million) cap on tax credit payouts for projects where at least 30 percent of the production is made in Italy. Local productions will be capped at €9 million ($10 million). The overall fund for film and audiovisual investments in 2024. however, remains unchanged at about €700 million ($782 million).

The Minister of Culture, meanwhile, provides more than half of the Venice Film Festival‘s annual operating budget, spending about $15 million a year.    

Sangiuliano calls cinema “the form of art that is closest to people, the one that really excites people, and especially the younger generations.” He brags that this year the Venice Film Festival is once again a star-studded international showcase. “Just scrolling through the list of participants of the stars who come to Venice, one gets a sense of how important and relevant this event is,” he says.

“As a government, we are working hard to support the film industry. We have worked to rationalize, and to make more ethical, the mechanisms for allocating resources to cinema, such as the tax credit, but also our selective contributions. We are satisfied with the work we have done. Cinema is a great dream, and each of us relives his life through the films he has appreciated over the years,” the minister said when asked how committed he was to tax credits and incentives for film production. 

The Italian minister, naturally, also probably wanted to mention Paolo Sorrentino, Luca Guadagnino and Matteo Garrone, but he restrained himself and instead said that “Italy is proud of the excellence of those in the Italian film industry, and we want to support this sector. Today, Italy is producing extraordinary and talented directors who are making a name for themselves worldwide.”