Problems in Hungarian film funding

13 July, 2010 - Zsolt Gyenge

„I would call at least irresponsible the management in the previous years of the Hungarian Motion Picture Association” – the new president of MMKA, Zoltán Kőrösi told Index.hu after having finished the audit of the institution. MMKA has banking obligations in the value of 8 billion HUF (28.8 million Euros) which – according to Kőrösi – makes the financing of future projects almost impossible.

This means that the situation is even worse than what Mr. Kőrösi envisaged in his interview given to FNE a few weeks ago, when he declared that instead of the yearly 25-30 feature films only 15 will be financed by MMK. Now he told magyar.film.hu that even this figure seems too optimistic, and that they won’t be able to sustain the funding promised to producers this spring.

Beside this due to the reorganizations within the government and budget restrictions, MMKA hasn’t received any payment since June, which created liquidity problems in the institution. In this way it might happen, that several films in an advanced phase of development will have to be delayed, or shootings that have already started will have to stop. Mr. Kőrösi said that eight films are in a critical stage so they are working on creating a priority list and try to find solutions together with the concerned producers.