Italy's Senate unanimously passes cinema reform, with a new film agency due in 2028

Final Senate vote

The Senate gave final approval on 4 November 2026 to the bill on cinema, which passed with 123 votes in favour and no votes against or abstentions. Once the result was announced, the chamber broke into applause. The text was left unchanged from the version the Chamber of Deputies approved in September, so it did not need another passage in the lower house. Pupi Avati, considered the father of the law, watched from the gallery with his brother and screenwriter Antonio Avati, alongside Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein, who is the first signatory of the bill. The reform updates the framework ten years after the 2016 cinema law and covers production, distribution, exhibition, conservation and the protection of workers in the sector.

Agency, governance and funding

The reform creates an Agenzia per il cinema e l'audiovisivo, a non-economic public body with its own organisational, financial and management autonomy. It is due to start on 1 January 2028 and will take over the operational functions of the cinema directorate-general of the Culture Ministry, while political direction, strategic oversight and inspections stay with the ministry. Two agenda orders accepted in the Senate committee ask to postpone the start to 2029. The bill also creates a Forum of experts with sixteen members, half drawn from associations, which will replace the Consiglio superiore and serve without fees. Three of the five agency board members will be designated by the ministers of Culture and Economy, and the director will be proposed by the minister with a favourable parliamentary opinion from two-thirds of the chambers. On money, Undersecretary Lucia Borgonzoni said the government had recovered promised funds.

“We will make sure this law does not block the sector in any way and that the implementing decrees are adopted as quickly as possible.”

Borgonzoni put the recovered sums at 70 million euros for this year and 150 million for the next, and she said the reform was built on listening to the industry. The Senate floor was where she made the promise on the decrees, in reply to authors' concerns.

2026 (this year)70

2027 (next year)150

2026 (this year)

70 million euros

2027 (next year)

150 million euros

Data from the article text

Authors and producers push back

Not every reaction was positive. The associations of authors, directors and screenwriters, now grouped in a Coordinamento to speak with one voice, said they were perplexed by the decision to withdraw all amendments. Those amendments were turned into agenda orders that the government accepted, which allowed the text to pass unchanged from the Chamber. The Coordinamento argued that a system law should not come from assembling different proposals or from postponing unresolved issues to later measures. Under the delegation, the government will reform sector policy and public economic support, balancing automatic and selective aid, tax incentives and grants. The government has two years to reorganise incentives and welfare through legislative decrees.

Political reactions

Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli spoke to Adnkronos at an event in Florence after the vote and dedicated the day to the director Tinto Brass, a great master who had died. He credited a path shared between majority and opposition and called the result a milestone for Italian culture.

“I thank Parliament for the approval of the cinema law in a climate of unanimous concord.”

Federico Mollicone, chair of the Chamber's culture committee for Fratelli d'Italia, praised the cross-party process and the new rules on artificial intelligence.

“We are regulating, among the first in Europe, the use of artificial intelligence to defend human work and creators.”

Mollicone also said the agency reflects a proposal from Pupi Avati, who first asked for that path, and that a tax credit manager will oversee incentives. Pupi Avati told Il Messaggero in the gallery that the law was his.

What comes next

The agency's start date, the implementing decrees and the Forum's first sessions are the next steps. The Forum will give a direct voice to the whole supply chain, including the video and videogame sector, at no cost. The bill also calls for a revival of Cinecittà, a piracy crackdown and a national plan to reopen and refurbish cinemas. Implementation now depends on those decrees, and the government has until the agency's 2028 launch to deliver them.