Before signing on with an international partner, Nasi warns, producers need to get absolute clarity. How much is the co-producer contributing? What production fees and expenses will be deducted?
Even U.S. independent filmmakers are lining up for international public funds from Canada, Mexico, Latin America and European countries now, Chilean producer Giancarlo Nasi told attendees at his Industry Masterclass “Exploring the Art and Strategy of International Co-Productions,” which took place at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) on Oct 2. As private financing dries up, producers are looking for foreign subsidies. They really want to get public money from other countries of the world,” he said.
Nasi, founder of Quijote Films and an intellectual-property lawyer who’s now based in LA, has produced 29 features– many of which have been co-productions. His latest, the South African film “The Smell of Apples,” a co-production with the Netherlands and Chile, recently premiered at TIFF. Public funds, he says, have traditionally been reserved for the types of films that traditional studios or streamers aren’t likely to finance.
But competition is getting fiercer. Which, 10, five years ago, would be crazy.” Last year, a significant share of titles at Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight he added, had no sales agent at all. Nasi is also seeing U.S. independent filmmakers who once assumed they didn’t need money from abroad now looking to tap into international public funds.
There’s insufficient funds in Chile, for example, to make films at the size Nasi wants, and the market is too small. It can determine where a film is shot, impose requirements around local crew or post-production, affect casting and limit various creative choices. The best-co-productions, he argues, are those that make creative as well as financial sense.
He kept returning to Felipe Gálvez’s 2023 debut, “The Settlers,” a lauded period Western shot in the far south of Chile, which he produced. Officially a three-country co-production, it unofficially drew companies from eight or nine territories, among them France, Argentina, the U.K., Taiwan, Sweden, Denmark and Germany as well as tapping U.S. equity. It premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2023, won its Fipresci Prize and played TIFF.
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