The Municipality of Milan receives an average of two location requests a day: the 462 permits granted this year for photographic or film shoots have transformed the capital of the Lombard region into an open-air set. A quarter of the applications are for advertising videos and fashion shoots: the Duomo, Galleria, Scala and Palazzo Reale are the most requested locations, while 122 permits were issued for activity in the city’s parks and green spaces. Cinema and TV have brought important productions here, including Gianni Amelio’s Hammamet about the last weeks of Bettino Craxi’s life starring Pierfrancesco Favino and the TV drama Made in Italy about the Italian fashion industry in the 1970s which is due for broadcast on Canale 5 this season. Milan and the conservatory were the backdrop for the Rai TV series La compagnia del cigno, written by Ivan Cotroneo and followed by 6 million viewers.
Applications for permits have doubled in the 2010 – 2018 timeframe, rising from 342 to 717. The boom happened in the aftermath of the 2015 Expo when over 500 productions were registered. To date this year, 58 more permits have already been granted than were issued in the entire year of 2017, with a large percentage of applications coming from abroad: from January to July applications were received from Japanese (14), British (11) and German (7) productions with a single request from Bollywood, down from the usual demand.
This boom for the municipal coffers was worth €186,000 in 2018, three times the amount raised in 2010. That’s without even counting the return in terms of visibility.