Film and Broadcasting Industry

Producers from all over the world are strongly attracted to the capital. Amongst the 250 annual productions there are quite a number of large international productions and series, including »Cloud Atlas« (Tom Tykwer), »Inglourious Bastards« (Quentin Tarantino), »Grand Budapest Hotel«/„Isle of Dogs“ (Wes Anderson), „Bridge of Spies“ (Steven Spielberg), „Radegund“ (Terrence Malick), „The Hunger Games – Mockingjay“, „Submergence" (Wim Wenders) as well as “The Girl in the Spider’s Web“ (Fede Alvarez) with Claire Foy as star in the series and 2017 Golden Palm d'Or winner “The Square“ (Ruben Östlund). "Una Mujer Fantastica“ by Sebastián Lelio won the Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 2017 and won the Oscar 2018 in the category of best foreign film. The region achieved a new record with well over 5300 days of shooting.

Thanks to a good infrastructure for productions and favourable conditions for subsidies it does not come as a surprise that Berlin remains unchallenged in top position regarding film and television locations with its more than 4.115 enterprises and around 35,700 employees. The industry’s turnover amounted to about 2.2 billion Euros in 2016.  

• 18% of the enterprises in the national film- and television industry are located in Berlin
• about 8% of the national film- and television industry’s turnover is generated in Berlin,  continuously rising
• around 10% of the employees in the film- and television industry across Germany work in Berlin.

Berlin is extremely well set up in the section of film, where productions, creative talents in the area of theatre, direction and script as well as the number of cinemas are concerned. Berlin is also top of the list with regard to production locations in Germany - about 900 production enterprises are located in Berlin - and also a large number of independent producers are located here. Important television producers include - amongst others - UFA-Gruppe, Ziegler Film, NFP as well as Studio Adlershof. The list of film producers - amongst these Barefoot Films and X Filme - stand for economic success as well as being very well received by the audience. The film location of Berlin also benefits from a close interaction between producers, technical service providers and studios. The film distribution as a marketer is an important link in the value-added chain. Apart from the Wild Bunch AG, StudioCanal Gruppe and subsidiaries of internationally working rental companies such as Sony Pictures or Deutsche Columbia Pictures, strong independent rental companies such as X-Verleih, Tobis, Delphi, Salzgeber and Piffl are active in the Arthouse segment.

‘Video on Demand’ gains in importance and thus the production of series. Supported by Medienboard successful series such “Babylon Berlin“, “You are wanted“, “Dogs of Berlin“, “4 Blocks“, “Deutschland 86“ as well as international series “Berlin Station“ and “Counterpart“ were produced in the capital. New content producers for Web-TV and video portals, amongst these the Collective Studio71, Divimove and the YouTube Kollektiv 301 add additional drive to the moving picture market.

Funding of the state of Berlin

• Medienboard Film Funding
• Medienboard Serial Formats
• Creative Europe – European Media Funding
• Interim financing of film productions
• Crowdfunding Platform
• Coaching Bonus
• Berlin Innovative Credit
• ProFIT Innovations funding program
• Pro FIT – Frühphasenfinanzierung
• Internationalization Program Foreign Presentations