Spanish rights group Egeda hosted a round table Sept. 23 at the San Sebastian Festival to shed light on its bid to find and explore solutions to the stickiest challenge facing filmmakers – access to financing. The panel featuring ICAA head Ignasi Camós, Luis Cueto from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Service, Javier Villaseca of Sego Finance, Jesus Prieto of Sego Creative and executive producer Miguel Torrente of Balment, analyzed the benefits of Sego Creative, a financing tool that specializes in the creative and cultural industries, and is the offshoot of the collaborative agreement that Egeda inked with crowdfunding platform, Sego Finance Group, last May.
The round table was moderated by Egeda’s Carlos Antón who pointed out that if Spanish filmmakers were to be competitive on a global scale, such an innovative financing tool was key. Asked what was the production cost of all Spanish audiovisual productions in a given year, ICAA’s Camós replied: “We don’t have an exact figure, but we can make an estimated calculation if we consider that in film alone, 337 were made in Spain last year, with an average budget of $2.5 million each,” he said.
Doing the math, he calculated that €1.6 to €1.7 billion ($1.
8 billion-$1.9 billion) was invested in film production in Spain. Sego Creative will connect the interests of investors with promoters of audiovisual projects, and is available to all Egeda members who have a project, in any format and at an.