Paris and Mumbai-based production service company La Fabrique Films is looking forward to a further surge in business in the wake of new Indian filming incentives that were announced in Cannes.

International productions filming in India can be reimbursed up to 35% of qualifying production spend in the country.

La Fabrique, which specializes in European films shooting in India, has been operational since 2013 and films they have provided production services for include “Les Cowboys,” “The Best Is Yet to Come” and “And Tomorrow We Will Be Dead.” La Fabrique has just wrapped work on Laetitia Colombani’s “The Braid” and company principals Déborah Benattar and Javed Wani are currently attending the Cannes Film Market.

The initial reimbursement for international shoots in India is 30%, which can go up by an additional 5% for productions employing 15% or more manpower in India.

“The incentives will be a great advantage for foreign producers who decide to come and shoot in India also, because there is this bonus of 5%, they may want to employ more Indian technicians, because, from our experience, we have amazing technicians in India. It will be an additional incentive to probably replace a couple of foreigners by Indians,” Benattar told Variety.

Benattar says that productions may decide to advance their shooting schedules in India because of the incentive. “If they know that they will get a refund of 30% they may decide to shoot and not wait for the final funding. So, definitely it will bring more projects to us for sure,” Benattar says.

India-bound projects that are stuck because of gap funding up to 30% will also be accelerated, says Wani. “We get a lot of inquiries about gap funding and those projects are going to come alive now,” Wani says. We are going to go back to them, talk to them, and tell them about the incentives.”

La Fabrique has two more European projects lined up to shoot in India on which details are under wraps at the moment and discussions are also on with films from other parts of the world.

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