French Cinema and Moving Image Code

The investment of sums held in their automatic cinema production account by production companies for the production of long-running cinematographic works is subject to the issue of an investment authorisation.

For the purposes of investment approval, feature films must meet the conditions set out in sub-section 2 of section 1 of this chapter.

The application for investment approval may initially only be submitted by the delegated production company. This application may be submitted until the cinema exhibition licence has been issued. However, in the cases provided for in article 211-49, this application must be submitted before shooting begins. For cinematographic works belonging to the documentary genre, filmed location scouting is not considered as the start of filming.

In the case of a co-production, investment approval may be requested by each of the production companies not designated as delegated production companies by the co-production contract until the cinematographic exhibition licence is issued. It is issued to each of the production companies party to the co-production contract that requests it.

The sums invested by the production companies and any direct allocations are allocated in advance of the final allocation decision constituted by the production licence.

The sums allocated to production companies are paid into a bank account opened specifically for each film.