Premier Rodney MacDonald delighted the film making community in Nova Scotia Thursday by announcing a boost to film tax credits.

At the opening of the 27th Atlantic Film Fest in Halifax, MacDonald said the province will increase the tax credit to 50 per cent from 35 per cent for feature films shot in Halifax.

Films shot in rural Nova Scotia will get an additional 10 per cent tax credit, he said.

Local filmmakers had been complaining that Nova Scotia can't compete as a film location because of a lack of financial incentives.

Nova Scotia had increased its tax credit to 35 per cent in 2005 but several provinces have since surpassed that amount, including New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

Johanna Lunn, a Nova Scotia filmmaker, said MacDonald's announcement will help create jobs in the local industry.

"We want to keep our people working 12 months out of the year. To do that, it really is this combination. We've been losing productions to other provinces that have better tax credits," she said.

"So, this really puts us in the competition once again to not just keep productions here in Nova Scotia, but to attract new productions."

Lunn's documentary Forgiveness: Stories For Our Time is to be screened during the festival. Lunn said the tax credit helped her make this film, and will be of assistance in future projects.

"It's great news for me because it helps me finance my film, and a huge part of the financing for that production was tax credit money," Lunn said.

"So, the more competitive we can be with our tax credit and the more desirable it is, the easier it is — in a tough, tough industry — to make films."

The film fest opened Thursday night with Shake Hands with the Devil, a film adaptation of Canadian Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire's account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which occurred while he led the UN peacekeeping in the African country.

The film was written by Halifax's Michael Donovan and produced by Donovan's Halifax Films.