The Cannes film festival is in full swing and Justin Lin's gasoline-fueled Fast & Furious 9 is playing. It is Georgia's first-ever studio production that was shot for 30 days from mid-August to mid-September in the capital, Tbilisi. F9 tapped the Film in Georgia scheme, which provides up to a 25 percent cash rebate on local spend, to the tune of $8.7 million. By far the biggest film production to ever shoot in the former Soviet republic, F9 was the test case to prove to Hollywood that Georgia could deliver at the tentpole level.

Georgia is continuing in this direction, pushing the country’s unique fusion of medieval and modern architecture with European, Soviet and Asian styles as a prime location for productions from Hollywood to Bollywood, from Europe to China.

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION

Incentives

Georgia offers a 20 percent to 25 percent cash rebate on local qualifying spend, with an additional 2 percent to 5 percent top up if a projects meets a cultural test by including elements designed to promote Georgia. The rebate can be used for key nonresident salaries paid in the country, up to a maximum of 15 percent of the local spend. International and local productions have to register as legal entities in Georgia. At least 50 percent of a project’s total budget must be in place at the time of application. The minimum spend for feature films, internet/TV films, drama series and miniseries is $174,000.

Facilities

GFS Studio in Tbilisi has three soundstages (two are 2,363 square feet with 24-foot ceilings and one is 3,300 square feet with a 26-foot ceiling).

Recent Shoots

F9, which spent more than 30 days and $8 million in Georgia, was the first studio project in the region. Other international shoots include British drama The Lady of Heaven, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight title And Then We Danced and Sharan Sharma’s Bollywood biopic Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl, about India’s first female air force pilot.