Film and TV Production in Poland to Resume on May 18

By Leo Barraclough

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Poland’s government has given the greenlight for film and TV production to resume on May 18 as it loosens restrictions in the battle against coronavirus.

The country introduced a 30% cash rebate for production at the start of last year, and the Polish Film Institute and the Polish Film Commission have been wooing foreign producers to come to shoot their projects there. In the first year of the incentive 26 projects benefited from a total fund of €12 million ($13 million).

Among the projects that recently shot there are an adaptation of Harlan Coben’s thriller “The Woods,” produced by local production powerhouse ATM Grupa for Netflix, and “The Turncoat,” a World War II miniseries directed by Florian Gallenberger, an Oscar winner for live-action short.

Upcoming projects to be lensed in Poland include Jonathan Glazer’s Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest,” which is being co-produced and distributed in the U.S. by A24, and “Rhino,” a new movie by Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, who was released last year after being imprisoned in Russia on trumped-up terrorism charges.

According to the guidelines for shooting in the post-COVID-19 period, crew members will have to wear masks, and actors will have to social distance from the crew. There are also rules on the number of people allowed on set – depending on the nature of the production, and clusters of crew are discouraged.