Usai (Anica): 'Cinema, sector at risk due to uncertainty over funds'
'The long timeframe for the new tax credit decree creates many problems'. Insiders' focus on the renewal of Rai Cinema's top management
Italia cinema is on its feet, but there are cracks underneath. The cinema has given encouraging signs, with the start of the year driven by domestic titles and the summer promising thanks to American blockbusters. On 2 June there were 277 million box office receipts (+28%) for 36.57 million admissions (+21%) (Cinetel data). Even looking at it from the point of view of Italia cinema with co-productions, the 90.1 million box office receipts mark an increase of 16%, driven by the Zalone effect with his "Buen Camino".
But the industrial machine that must decide today on the films of 2027 and 2028 is proceeding with the brakes on. Node: once again the tax credit. The inter-ministerial decree, passed by the Mic, has remained in the Mef-Corte dei conti funnel longer than expected.
It would now be ready for publication, very soon according to Sole 24 Ore. But on the subject Alessandro Usai, president of Anica, uses clear words: 'The Mic has done its part. The mechanism has slowed down elsewhere. Now, however, there is a real risk'. The fear is that the industry will get bogged down while the public seems to be returning to the theatres. 'We know the contents of the decree because they were explained to us verbally in meetings at the Ministry of Culture, but we do not have a final version and we are waiting for it to be published,' Usai explains.
The process was supposed to be quick. It was not. So businesses move 'on trust. If we had had to wait for the mathematical certainty of a published decree, everything would have stopped. Added to the production situation is then the suspension, by the TAR, of the tax credit distribution, which froze, following appeals, the funds for the film released from mid-2023 to today and to which we must also try to find a solution quickly'.
The paradox: the urgency is not just about tomorrow's money, but yesterday's money. 'The biggest battle we are doing is to speed up the liquidation of contributions from past years'. At stake are 'tens, hundreds of millions' of tax credits, selective and automatic contributions 'already approved, already published, but which for one reason or another never become cash'.
