American cast and crew will be able to travel to the Czech Republic and Hungary to work on film and TV productions, despite European Union’s ban on travelers from the US, heads of those countries’ national film commissions indicated.
“Please let me assure you this (travel ban) is not valid for economic workers but tourism travelers only. Filmmakers of all nations are welcome in the Czech Republic,” Pavlína Zipkova, the head of the Czech Film Commission, told Hollywood executives and studios in a letter seen by CNN.
Zipkova explained that filmmakers will be provided with two documents — a “Confirmation of Performance of Economic Activities in the Interest of the Czech Republic,” signed by Czech Culture Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, and a “Declaration Concerning Arrival of a Foreign Crew Member” by the director of the Czech Film Fund, Helena Bezdek Frankova.
In a similar move, Hungarian Film Commissioner Csaba Káel told CNN “special exemption can be granted for non-EU residents to enter Hungary without mandatory quarantine.”
Some background: The EU has published a list of 14 countries from outside the union whose citizens can enter from July 1 based on a set of health criteria, but the US was excluded from that list due to the rise in coronavirus infections in some parts of the country.
The criteria does allow for exemptions for “highly qualified” essential workers and can be expanded to include further categories of travelers. The final decision on who can enter a country rests with the member state.
In 2019 more than 80 films and television series were made in the Czech Republic, contributing $393 million to the country’s economy, according to the Czech Film Commission.
Filming is currently paused on Marvel’s and Disney+ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Amazon’s Carnival Row, according to the commission.
Hungary’s National Film Institute says the country is “the most popular filming destination in continental Europe” and that large scale productions spent more than $565 million there in 2019.
With sound stages “booked up for the entire year,” Hungary’s National Film Institute has released a series of Covid-19 guidelines for filmmakers to ensure the health and safety of cast and crew, which Káel hopes will “make it possible to restart production at full capacity.”
One of those productions is Denis Villeneuve’s big-budget sci-fi movie Dune, which was partly filmed in the country last year, with shooting scheduled to resume in August, according to Hungary’s National Film Institute.
CNN