The presentation of the Report on the Italian Audiovisual Industry 2023 by APA – Associazione Produttori Audiovisivi was held today, 13 October 2023, during the ninth edition of the MIA – Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo.
The panel, held in Room 5 of the Cinema Barberini, was presented by Chiara Sbarigia, President of APA. Speakers at the talk included Lucia Borgonzoni, Undersecretary of State to the Ministry of Culture, Eleonora Andreatta, Vice President Italian Originals of Netflix, Antonella d’Errico, Executive Vice President Content of Sky Italia, Antonella Dominici – Senior Vice President Streaming South Europe Middle East & Africa for Paramount+ and Pluto TV, Giampaolo Rossi, General Manager, RAI and Gina Nieri, Executive Director Mediaset. The event was moderated by Elisabetta Stefanelli, ANSA Culture and Entertainment Editor-in-Chief.
The focus of the event was the presentation of the fifth Report on the Italian Audiovisual Industry , an important tool for assessing the health of the sector and anticipating its future development with a view to better targeting the regulatory and industrial dynamics of the national audiovisual sector.
Eleonora Andreatta was one of the first to take the floor, illustrating the future challenges for Italian audiovisual production: “The diffusion of the Italian language is something we hold dear. Italy is well known abroad for the great flourishing of the industry in the 1960s and this created an imagery that is still vivid. Our challenge is to tell a contemporary Italy in which the public recognises itself.”
Antonella D’Errico then took the floor, dwelling in particular on the strong points of Italian productions: “What I think has proved very successful for the Italian audiovisual industry is quality and the ability to focus on national themes that are appealing abroad. For example, the feature films produced with Vision Distribution, L’ultima Notte d’amore and Adagio, have great potential for foreign distribution and a modern language.”
Antonella Dominici, on the other hand, outlined the strategy that Paramount is adopting for the Italian market: “Paramount entered with different titles that no one else had done. We have introduced productions of various genres, because we have the ambition to entertain the family nucleus and the objective of raising the catalogue beyond the very strong IPs coming from the United States. (…) The experiments have been different, such as Circeo, which was a wonderful opportunity to tell an Italian story and to reflect on a very broad topic such as violence against women.”
Giampaolo Rossi then framed the situation described by the document: “This report basically says that the Italian audiovisual market is in a waiting phase, after the rebound ended the pandemic, and reaffirms the centrality of public service in the system.”
Gina Neri commented on the data presented, dwelling on the comparison between Italy and other European countries: “There is a very high level of competition that has been a harbinger of greater content but also of cost increases. I believe there is a need to put a lot of resources into the Italian audiovisual system. It is absolutely behind all the other big countries in Europe.”
Lucia Borgonzoni, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Culture, instead emphasised the need to adapt the tax credit to the times: “The tax credit instrument must be reviewed to avoid waste and to take into account the dual nature, cultural and entrepreneurial, of the national audiovisual system”.
