Being in the US I really have no real understanding of how film commissions work like that. So is this something you couldn't try to finance independently? Or do you need approval from the film fund?
Sorry it didn't get the go-ahead.
You are free to do what you want. If you can get it funded without the fund, all the better for you.
But because movies are expensive and our audience is small, it's only feasable for real mainstream or cheap movies (the only ones doing it are really lowbrow comedies and movies based on popular tv-shows) to actually turn a profit. For most projects, support from the film fund is essential to get the film going. The rest of the budget gets filled with private money (tax breaks help a lot for that), film funds from other countries (every movie is in essence a co-production, and you can only apply there if you get funding from your own film fund), pre-sales from distributors and broadcasters, etc. Basically it's impossible to have full funding without the Film Fund support.
Apart from that, the fund also supports screenwriter's per project etc, which ensures you actually get a decent pay for your work. It's also a sort of bottleneck construction, where more projects get screenwriting funding than there are getting the later development fund, and even less projects getting the production fund (at the moment in Flanders: 7 fiction works, 1 youth movie and 1 animation movie. The fund also supports documentaries, shorts and high-end tv-shows, but I don't know the numbers of those)
Edit: and yeah, it sucks, as I really want to see this thing made. It's something Belgian cinema hasn't done yet, and I'm pretty happy with how the screenplay turned out (though it needs polish). I'm fully payed for my work though, so that's at least a comfort. It's just that I have another year ahead of mee tooling at this script, while I was ready to move focus to other projects.
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