Kirsten Niehuus has been elected to be president of the German Federal Film Board, known locally as the FFA, the first time a woman has been chosen for the role.
Variety anticipated the appointment in an article published in May at the Cannes Film Festival here.
Niehuus, an entertainmen lawyer by training but someone with a wicked wit, succeeds Bernd Neumann, an esteemed former minister of culture in the German government, who has stepped down.
Until this summer, Niehuus had served as CEO of Medienboard, the film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, a major backer of international co-productions. Niehuus had previously been deputy CEO at the FFA from 1999 to 2004, when she segued across to Medienboard. Sarah Duve-Schmid, the deputy CEO of the FFA until June, succeeded Niehuus as Medienboard chief.
The FFA is a powerful body within the German film landscape. It distributed 20 million euros ($23.4 million) to 50 projects for production and script funding last year, including cash for Cannes films like Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” and Christian Petzold’s “Miroirs No. 3,” box-office hits such as “School of Magical Animals 4,” and hot arthouse titles like Ruben Östlund’s “The Entertainment System Is Down.”
It’s an exciting time to take the reins at the FFA after Germany revamped its film funding structure at the end of last year, with FFA’s funding portfolio expanded to cover all federal film funding. Also, German producers are now able to claim up to 30% of their local production costs – increased from the previous 20% for feature films and up to 25% for TV productions.
But the legislative changes have not gone far enough in the eyes of many in the German industry, and, back in May, Niehuus told Variety she agreed with this point of view. “I think the industry needs an automatic [production incentive] scheme that is competitive with the other schemes, like in Hungary,” she said. “We see lots of productions going to shoot in Hungary rather than in Germany, and we don’t see as many incoming productions from America, not to mention the tariffs thing. We are not attractive enough to the larger American productions, and that obviously hits all over Germany. It’s Bavaria as much as Hamburg or Berlin.”
Asked if she was optimistic the legislation that would deliver a competitive incentive would go through this year, she said, “Fingers crossed. I mean, I hope so. Optimism is, you know … after so many years in the business, we’ve seen all kinds of miracles for better or for worse.”
