The Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced the ten co-productions awarded €60,000 each through its HBF+Europe support schemes, with eight supported for co-production and two for post-production. The selection comes with a strong commitment to emerging talent, supporting a majority of first or second time feature filmmakers and covering a wide geographical spread, with filmmakers from Singapore, Turkey, Lebanon, Chile, Tunisia, Mexico and Argentina.
Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the HBF: “While demonstrating an impressive range of artistic approaches, all the projects in this selection call for the need to make our world a better place. Each production team follows a complex path to bring projects to fruition, and in cases like the two supported projects from Argentina, these funds will prove crucial to realising ambitious, artistically driven work. I am proud to make the HBF part of these strong collaborative efforts between international producers and selected filmmakers.”
The topic of migration is present throughout the selection, notably in Love Conquers All; Marie & Jolie similarly deals with movements of people. Bruno Santamaría presents a 90s-set story in Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul; another period tale is Hijas únicas. The ghosts of the Paraguay War haunt the community in El mundo es nuestro. Olivia tackles the theme of disappearance; Agora is the second project supported for post-production. One of the eight projects selected for Co-production Support must remain anonymous.
Two of the projects selected are Netherlands co-productions, both debut features. As Shadows Fade by Turkish filmmaker Burcu Aykar is a poetic, multilayered narrative that deals with queer issues and women’s liberation in 1990s Turkey, and is co-produced by Amsterdam’s Isabella Films. Set in an all-girls school in Singapore, Amoeba by Siyou Tan is supported for the third time by the HBF, following development and NFF+HBF funding, and is co-produced with Rotterdam’s Volya Films.
Source/images: IFFR
