The exceptional closing of the continuous grant application period is due to the drastic reduction in AVEK’s budget, which is threatening our activities. As we do not yet know our financial situation for next year, we cannot accept any more applications. The application period for our grants that have a continuous application process, i.e. grants for audiovisual works, support for international promotion, and training and course support, closed on the last day of October.
Our commissioners are currently processing the applications for support for audiovisual works, with 225 applications currently open. Of these, 100 are for scriptwriting support. “The eight-week processing time we normally promise may be exceeded for some applications due to the large number of applications. However, we believe that we will be able to process the applications by the end of the year,” says Ulla Simonen, director of AVEK.
We will publish the decisions on the support for international promotion and training support in early December.
“The current need for support in the audiovisual sector is enormous. By the end of October, AVEK had received far more grant applications for audiovisual works than it did during the whole of last year,” says Simonen.
“It is sad and unfortunate that we still do not know anything more specific about AVEK’s operating conditions for next year, and we cannot even estimate when we will be able to start receiving applications again. As things stand, it seems that the funding available for AVEK’s grants will be halved in 2025 — unless the cuts to the compensation for private copying planned by the Government are reversed in Parliament.”