Today, May 19, New Zealand and Denmark entered a formal co-production agreement providing new opportunities for collaboration between the two countries' film and television industries. The agreement was signed at the Cannes Festival by the New Zealand Film Commission and the Danish Film Institute.
"We are really pleased to have reached an agreement with New Zealand," says Henrik Bo Nielsen, CEO of the Danish Film Institute who signed the agreement with New Zealand Film Commission's CEO Dave Gibson. "It gives us great opportunities for launching new and exciting projects. We have similar treaties with Canada and France; this time we have made sure to cover the entire audiovisual field, thus including television, computer games and cross-media in the agreement," says Henrik Bo Nielsen.
The agreement follows the feature debut in 2013 by New Zealand director Daniel Joseph Borgman, "The Weight of Elephants", which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. Produced by Zentropa of Denmark and filmed in New Zealand, the film was the first unofficial co-production venture between the two countries.
With the new agreement, Danish films can apply for funding in New Zealand and vice versa, while the co-production process will be made