Argentina’s far-right leader Javier Milei’s government has pushed through its controversial plans to defund all state funding to the country’s national film body, the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA.)
Milei’s Human Capital Ministry, in an official public notice, said that it found a $4 million deficit in INCAA’s budget partly funded by the Treasury, which in turn, would move to cut costs by suspending all funding to the institute.
“Our commitment to a zero budget deficit is non-negotiable. The time when film festivals were financed with the hunger of thousands of children is over,” the ministry stated in its official notice.
The strict plans will witness large parts of INCAA’s everyday operations suspended, with phone lines, transport fares, overtime pay, and staff contracts cut. Additionally, the ruling will halt all assistance for national film premieres. This action is anticipated to impact the Mar del Plata International Film Festival in Eastern Argentina, recognized as the sole Category A film festival in Latin America, as well as Ventana Sur, a market-based in Buenos Aires jointly organized by INCAA and Cannes’ Marché du Film.
This controversial bill has shaken the local filmmakers, who in the past have fought Milei’s government’s previous attempts to disrupt the state funding for INCAA. Argentinian filmmakers also got international support in the form of high-profile names like Pedro Almodóvar, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Justine Triet, and Isabelle Huppert.
State funding for cinema in Argentina had been structured around a distinctive model, driven by what locals characterize as two “self-sustaining” financial reserves: the first derived from a tax on cinema tickets, and the second sourced from revenue generated by a government levy on broadcasting companies.
“It would be the end of Argentinian cinema as we know it. It’s as simple as that,” veteran Los Angeles-based Argentinian producer Axel Kuschevatzky (Argentina, 1985) told Deadline when discussing past plans to gut INCAA funding.
“Argentina will go from producing about 200 movies a year to producing a handful, and those films will be supported mostly by streamers,” Kuschevatzky added.
Following the news, a large-scale protest against the cuts will be organised on Thursday by the local film union Cine Argentino Unido.
“For social security, education, and public health, for the Argentine territory and its resources, for national industries, for memory and for our cultural sovereignty, this community roundly rejects the DNU and the draft law omnibus,” the group said in a statement.
“We ask the Lawmakers who have the responsibility to protect our rights today, to say NO to this run over.”
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