CANNES, France (AFP) ― Europe’s top film festival opens in Cannes on Wednesday to its annual show of glitz and popping champagne corks, but for many in the continent’s movie business, times are tough and likely to get tougher still.

The financial crisis that erupted in 2008 is now biting hard into state and regional subsidies and TV programming budgets that are a key support for film-making. Added to that in some countries is the problem of rampant piracy, as people snub a trip to the cinema and instead download their films off the Internet.

“There are many clouds over movie funding,” said Eric Garandeau, head of France’s National Cinema Centre (CNC), which helps the French film industry, the biggest in Europe.

“In some countries, the crisis is widespread ― in some places, long-standing policies are being scrapped.”

The 12-day Cannes Film Festival will feature six French, one Italian and one Dutch film in competition. But Spain ― one of the most prolific and quirky producer countries ― will literally be out of the picture.

Laurent Creton, head of the Paris-based Institute for Cinema and Audiovisual Research (IRCAV), says the mood of belt tightening has played an important if indirect role in reducing output. He is especially worried for the long-term impacts.

“You can’t make an automatic association between austerity and movie-making capacity,” he said in an interview. “But in today’s tough economic climate, companies start to go out of business, which is a threat to the skills base.”

In debt-wracked Spain, aid to the movie industry slumped from 123 million euros ($160 million) in 2010 to 55 million euros this year ― and cinema admissions have been whacked by a rise in value-added tax from eight percent to 21 percent.

“If we don’t find new sources of income, many movie projects will be shelved, and it will be a great loss for cultural creativity in Europe,” said the president of the Spanish cinemas federation, Juan Ramon Gomez Fabra.

A leading independent distributor, Alta Films, recently filed for bankruptcy, a development that the French Association of Film Exporters (Adef), which sells French movies to its neighbour, said was a tragedy.

Adef took aim at two perceived causes: what it described as a “lack of Spanish political support” for the cinema, and decisions by state and private TV channels to stop buying “auteur” films, meaning movies that are made by marginal or provocative directors.