How the National Film Institute of Hungary Is Bridging the Gap Between Hollywood and Budapest

Production tax credits have been in the news quite a bit, as of late.

New data released by FilmLA on Oct. 16 shows that filming in L.A. is approaching historically low levels. A few days later, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra talked about the state of production, domestically, saying, “There’s a very significant difference in California, which has been the hardest hit [and] just hasn’t responded to what’s going on in the world of incentives.” Shortly after this, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a proposal that would increase the current cap for a program that provides tax relief to producers looking to film in the state. All in all, a big news week for rebates.

In the middle of the news, the Made in Hungary Film Festival, which is organized by the National Film Institute of Hungary in collaboration with Liszt Institute New York, was taking place in Los Angeles, celebrating domestic and international titles that were filmed in the country, which offers a number of impressive production incentives to lure Hollywood film and TV shoots.

At a Made in Hungary closing cocktail celebration, guests enjoyed macarons colored red, white and green after the colors of the Hungarian flag. It was announced that Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, which took home several Oscars at this year’s Academy Awards, including for production design to Hungarian set decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek, was awarded the best international feature made in Hungary.

“If you ask producers, they say that the Hungarian below-the-line staff is exceptionally reliable,” says National Film Institute CEO Ákos Bertalan Pal. “We are just renewing an economic study, which shows the impact of the film industry on the taxation system. We are close to finishing it but the overall message is that even with this rebate, the state budget is [positive]. At the same time, it gives people jobs and it increases GDP.”

Establishing the National Film Institute to coordinate the country’s film industry only several years ago, Hungary has become a filming hub for international productions, including awards season hopefuls like Angelina Jolie starter Maria and Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist.

According to the NFI, the total spending on production hit a record high in 2023 in Hungary, reaching $910 million, almost four times more than 2018’s $183 million. As for production capabilities, the NFI is undergoing an expansion at its studio complex, adding four new 2,500-square-meter soundstages, increasing total studio capacity to 12,670 square meters.

THR spoke to Hungarian film commissioner Csaba Káel about what the country has to offer Hollywood, recent improvements to its production infrastructure and his ambition to become to “a hub of the European film business.”

What is your pitch to filmmakers who are considering shooting in Hungary?

We founded the National Film Institute in 2020 as the main organization of the Hungarian moving picture. We are an umbrella, we are organizing the film fund, and also we have film studios. We have the Hungarian Film Archive. We have the Hungarian film laboratories. We are trying to make good connections, which is why we are here in L.A., now. I just came back from Paramount Pictures, and I’m very proud because it was founded by a Hungarian man, Mr. Adolph Zukor. We have a 123-year-old film history. It’s an important connection between Budapest and Hollywood.

We don’t have a cap on the tax rebate level. The basic offer is this, 30 percent, but there is no limit. The Brutalist shot in Hungary, and [director] Brady Corbet said, “We were shooting in a country where things cost what they really should cost.” And the tax rebate has just been extended for another six years. We have nearly $3 billion euro budget [$3.2 billion] coming from the Hungarian state budget. This is a good amount. Colleen Bell [the director of the California Film Commission] just wrote me last week ,and they have $4.2 billion.

Outside of the tax rebate, what else does Hungary offer?

We have a very well-developed studio system around Budapest — we have five studio complexes. One is our the NFI studios — it is state-owned — and four private ones. But we have a very good collaboration with each other, because our goal is to increase the productions that are coming to Hungary. In the COVID [era], we started to develop our studio system because it was not enough, and we have built four new soundstages. In the beginning of the next year, we will increase our studio capacity by 22 percent — 12,000 square meters. For talent, it has very good positioning as a cultural hub. Angelina Jolie shot there, on the beginning of this year, Maria. She went to the state opera and enjoyed it. We have wonderful hotels, and very good food and wine. The most important thing is our professionals. It is mentioned [to me] a lot. The Kate Winslet movie Lee shot in the country, and Kate came back to Budapest only five hours from London to watch the movie with the crew.

How do you attract workers to the film industry?

We have an education program. It’s not enough to build only studios. We inaugurated two new studios; one is a new Digital Studios. [It is] the first in Europe where there is a big LED screen that film students can learn on. We have a lot of talent in the field of postproduction, and also on the field of the scoring. Maestro [Francis Ford] Coppola came to Budapest to score Megalopolis. We have eight orchestras in Budapest and you can use any of them.

What is your hope for the future of filmmaking in Hungary?

It’s our responsibility to make better and better content and in high quality. And we have to collaborate because Hungary is a small country. We can’t stop building, because we want to reach a position as a hub of the European film business. We are planning a film market because we are on the edge of the West and East — [one] where we can exchange our ideas about co-productions and distribution.