Rome MIA Market Strengthens Standing as Post-Mipcom, Pre-AFM Industry Confab
ROME — Rome’s new-concept MIA market for feature films, TV series, documentaries and video games has strengthened its standing as a post-Mipcom, pre-AFM industry gathering, with attendance for its second edition up more than 6%, according to figures released following the Oct. 20-24 event.
The market saw 1,500 accredited industry executives – more than half from outside Italy – making the trek to the Eternal City. The execs included about 350 buyers and 130 international sales agents, indicating some traction for an event that was launched last year in hopes of putting Italy back on the global content-markets map.
More important, those attending included high-level execs, especially on the TV side, despite the market coming hard on the heels of Mipcom in Cannes. Coming to Rome were Netflix senior manager of content acquisitions Felipe Tewes, Sony Pictures Entertainment senior VP of international TV production Diego Suarez, U.S. showrunner Tim Kring, and ITV Studios President Maria Kyriacou.
On the film side, which was Eurocentric but saw robust Latin American representation, the first high-profile deal was announced: Expanding Italian sales company True Colours made its first international acquisition, taking world rights outside North and Latin America on hot Mexican director Gary Alazraki’s next feature “Almost Paradise,” which Mexico’s Film Tank and Ivanhoe Pictures of the U.S. will co-produce with Italy’s Indigo Film (“The Great Beauty”).
“We have gone beyond being a place with great panels, in our first edition, to a place where deals are done,” said MIA director Lucia Milazzotto (pictured). “But I think it’s important that business was also done in the TV and documentary sectors,” she noted. Those deals still remain to be finalized, as is often the case with markets for fresh product.
Market screenings at MIA were up 7% to 140, 36 of which of which were world premiers of either completed or work-in-progress titles.
Though MIA has a long way to go in terms of becoming a major European mart, the cross-pollination between the international film and TV industries at its core seems to be working.
MIA – an acronym for Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo, which means International Audiovisual Market in Italian – also served as the platform for several significant announcements in the European animation, co-production, and film financing spheres:
— A dedicated Animation Day saw the launch of the European Animation Emile Awards, presided over by Peter Lord, creative director of the U.K.’s Aardman Animations (“Shaun the Sheep,” “Chicken Run“). The awards will honor 20 categories in the field and will have their first edition in 2017.
— Italy became the first non-Spanish-language country to join Ibermedia, the the multi-million-dollar regional film fund that provides soft money to productions in Latin America, Spain and Portugal. This will favor co-productions between Italy and Spanish-language countries.
— Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced plans to raise film production tax credits from the current 25% to 30% for international productions, with no per-project cap. The new tax incentives are part of legislation expected to be passed by year’s end. The Italian tax credit has been recently extended to include production of TV dramas.
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