Screen Global Production

Production is underway in Connemara in the west of Ireland on Irish-Portuguese mystery drama series Ar Ais Arís. Filming takes places across the landscapes of Irish-speaking Connemara and the city of Évora in Portugal. Julianne Forde at Ireland’s Tailored Films produces alongside Nuno Bernardo of Portugal’s beActive Entertainment with Heather Higgins and Ivan McMahon’s Galway-based Éiru Films.

Ameen Nayfeh, the Palestinian director of Venice 2020 title 200 Meters, has begun shooting drama Jo Of Montreal in Jordan ahead of filming in Saudi Arabia. Set around the historic Montreal Castle in the mountains of Al-Shoubak, filming kicked off in southern Jordan on July 1, with production set to continue across Al-Shoubak and AlUla in Saudi Arabia. The story follows Yusuf, a 12-year-old boy raised abroad, who reluctantly spends the summer in his father’s ancestral village.

Filming is underway in Hong Kong on period drama 1971, which reunites director Anselm Chan with stars Dayo Wong, Michael Hui and Michelle Wai from 2024’s The Last Dance – Hong Kong’s biggest ever local box office hit. Set against a historic turning point, the film revolves around the introduction of marriage reform that transitioned British colonial Hong Kong into a monogamous society.

Netflix is doubling down on its pushback to mandatory content investment requirements in France with a formal appeal to the country’s Council of State, alongside Prime Video and Disney+, challenging new diversity clauses introduced this year. The US streaming platform argues the rules are unsustainable and threaten diversity and creative freedom for the entire film and audiovisual industry in France and beyond borders.

International co-production was at the centre of the CineCoPro Conference of the Industry Days programme of the Munich International Film Festival this month. It brought together German producers and funders with counterparts from the five Nordic countries for a programme of presentations and roundtables as well as the CineCoProPitch showcase of nine projects in development.

The first Danish Production Incentive Scheme has awarded a total of 56.3m DKK ($8.6m) to seven productions. Productions include Nikolaj Arcel’s My Fairytale Life, a biopic of Danish writing legend Hans Christian Andersen, which receives 10.8m DKK ($1.7m). The film is in pre-production for Zentropa, with Casper Kjaer Jensen to play the lead role.

This week’s Munich International Film Festival (MIFF) cast the spotlight on the German government’s plans to introduce an investment obligation requiring international streamers and German VoD services to invest at least 8% of their net annual revenue in the production and exploitation of European audiovisual works The legislation may be operational from January 1, 2027, following the Federal cabinet’s adoption of the draft Media Services Investment Obligation Act at the end of May.

South African media conglomerate Known Associates Group (KAG) is expanding into Spain with backing from Spanish government funds. Two new film and TV ventures run by KAG-owned companies are to receive a total of €12.7m in Spanish public funding through the state-owned Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT).

The romantic comedy stars Menik Gooneratne, Nikesh Patel and Saagar Shaikh. By Michael Rosser 2 Jul 2026 Source: Sarah Enticknap Filming has begun in Australia on Fawzia Mirza’s romantic comedy Written In The Stars, starring Menik Gooneratne, Nikesh Patel and Saagar Shaikh. Based on Su Dharmapala’s bestselling novel The Wedding Season and adapted for the screen by Gooneratne, the film is set within Melbourne’s Sri Lankan community.

Shadowbox Studios is targeting independent film and TV productions with an initiative to make it easier for independent producers to access its UK and US facilities at Shinfield and Atlanta, respectively.