Hubert Bals Fund selects twelve features for support

After 1,169 submitted projects and an incredibly challenging selection process, twelve feature films were selected to receive Hubert Bals Fund Development Support grants of €10,000 each. Diverse yet united in their common effort to remain vocal amid the challenges of our times, the filmmakers of this funding wave extend across a variety of unique and creative styles, from Belarus and Kenya to Palestine.

Colhões de Ouro, Lillah Halla, Brazil, Germany

Conversation with the Sea, Muayad Alayan, Palestine

Enkop (The Soil), Angela Wanjiku Wamai, Kenya

Exactly What it Seems, Darya Zhuk, Estonia, Poland

Falso positivo, Theo Montoya, Colombia, Romania

Four Seasons in Java, Kamila Andini, Indonesia

Goodbye for Now, Kasım Ördek, Turkey

Le goût de la pêche, Elene Mikaberidze, Georgia

How Melissa Blew a Fuse, Una Gunjak, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany, Croatia, Serbia

MTV i.e. Mars to Venus, Midhun Murali, India

Notes of a Crocodile, Daphne Xu, Cambodia, China, Canada

Piedras gigantes, Christopher Murray, Chile

Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the Hubert Bals Fund said: “This wave of grant recipient filmmakers each come from a different context but share a common approach – they do not remain silent or give in to despair amid the challenges of our current times. Instead they stay active, speak up, and make their voices heard through their stories and artistry. The filmmakers selected for the grants are just a fraction of those who submitted for consideration, making this an incredibly challenging round. We would like to thank our selection committees of international film industry members from across the world, whose expertise and invaluable perspectives helped us narrow down to these final twelve projects. We would also like to once again thank Susan Weeks, whose generous donation meant we were able to offer two extra grants in this round.”

Brazilian filmmaker Lillah Halla, whose Levante won the Youth Jury Award at IFFR 2024, is one of a number of filmmakers with an IFFR history who are supported in this round of funding. Her new project Colhões de Ouro is awarded, a dark musical comedy on Krista Bomb, an 85-year-old radical who plans to infiltrate and destroy a hyper-masculine cult to save her son.

Kenyan filmmaker Angela Wanjiku Wamai’s epic neo-Western Enkop (The Soil) sets the story of fifty-five-year-old Lorna Marwa’s fight to reclaim her life on the dusty expanses of Kenya’s volatile ranch land. Wamai’s previous feature Shimoni had its European premiere at IFFR 2023.

Midhun Murali won a Tiger Special Jury Award at IFFR 2024 for the dazzling mixed-media fantasy Kiss Wagon. His next project, MTV i.e. Mars to Venus, is awarded, a similarly inventive feature that combines four different genres as part of a protagonist’s cinematic experiment.

Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan has screened at IFFR on several occasions, with the HBF-backed The Reports on Sarah and Saleem (IFFR 2018), and most recently A House in Jerusalem (IFFR 2023), which was also presented at CineMart. Conversation with the Sea is a love story about family, following a Palestinian man from Jerusalem who is ordered by an Israeli court to pay a debt owed by his son who died as a teenager 20 years ago.

Christopher Murray’s Piedras gigantes will be amongst the very first Chilean national fiction feature films shot on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the remote Pacific Ocean island that is officially a territory of Chile. He was previously supported for Brujería, which premiered at Sundance 2023. Made in close collaboration with the communities of the island, Piedras gigantes tells the story of the archaeologist Katherine Routledge arriving on the island in 1914, who played a conflicted role amidst an indigenous uprising.

In the road movie How Melissa Blew a Fuse, Melissa steals €200k from her workplace in Germany, buys a car, puts on music and heads towards her home town in Bosnia. It’s the second feature from Una Gunjak whose Excursion was HBF-supported and received a Special Mention in Cineasti del Presente at Locarno 2023.

Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini is supported for Four Seasons in Java, on a woman’s journey in finding peace after being wrongly convicted of murdering a young man. She was previously supported by the HBF for The Seen and Unseen, which had its world premiere in the TIFF Wavelengths strand in 2018.

The short Notes of a Crocodile by Chinese filmmaker Daphne Xu had its world premiere in the same strand in 2024, and is now the basis for a feature of the same name. The HBF backs the docufiction hybrid project, which weaves myth, queer desire and development politics against the Chinese development of a canal project in Cambodia.

Belarus is the setting for a dark sci-fi comedy touching on the immigrant experience in Darya Zhuk’s Exactly What It Seems. After escaping to the US, immigrants Nadya and Fedor are unwillingly transported back to Belarus by a secretive government teleportation technology.

In Falso positivo, Theo Montoya (Son of Sodom, 2020; Anhell69, 2022) approaches the ‘false positives’ murders in Colombia, where civilians were killed by the military and falsely passed off as enemy combatants, to sculpt a narrative on the falsification of reality. Four narratives touch on anarchic, queer themes and varying styles, from archival documentaries to body horror, film noir and sci-fi.

Georgian filmmaker Elene Mikaberidze’s documentary Blueberry Dreams had its world premiere at CPH:DOX earlier this year. She’s supported for her debut fiction feature, Le goût de la pêche, on a young woman who runs a guesthouse caught in escalating geopolitical tensions. Kasım Ördek’s feature debut follows Sevgi who, living with a gang on the margins of Istanbul, is drawn into a dangerous search after her mother’s mysterious disappearance. His previous short Together, Alone screened at the Sarajevo and Chicago film festivals.

Previous recipients of the grants continue to garner awards success at festivals across the world, from Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light and Baby by Marcelo Caetano in Cannes, Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity in Locarno, and To a Land Unknown by Mahdi Fleifel in Thessaloniki. In celebration of the Development Support scheme, the HBF together with partner foundation Projeto Paradiso launched the joint publication Development with Impact, offering insights into the vital role of early-stage development funding in Brazil and beyond.

International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) upcoming 54th edition of the festival will take place from 30 January – 9 February 2025, with the full programme being launched on 17th December 2024. IFFR presents a leading international film festival and year-round programme and actively supports new and adventurous filmmaking talent through its co-production market CineMart, its Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam Lab and other industry activities.

IFFR seeks to expand, enrich and challenge people’s views of the world and each other through film and audiovisual arts. IFFR’s programme deepens appreciation of cinema in all its forms, broadens and diversifies audiences, and creates opportunities for independent filmmakers and artists from around the globe.

Through IFFR’s visionary programming and forward-looking  initiatives, we create a haven for the plurality of voices, audiovisual formats and diverse storytelling. We are an essential destination for film professionals and film lovers. We support filmmakers and artists with funding and development opportunities and advance the impact of their work in the world. We are accessible to everyone. Through screenings, talks, exhibitions, education, professional initiatives and funding schemes we bring people from all backgrounds together, enabling discovery, recognition dialogue, learning and development. We look where others don’t and we open a space for ideas, pushing creative boundaries that have the power to transform.

IFFR is supported by partners including Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (OCW), Gemeente Rotterdam, Creative Europe Media, NL Film Fonds, Fonds 21, de Volkskrant and VriendenLoterij. 

Details on accreditation for IFFR 2025 can be found here.