Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund Backs Features From Brazil, Palestine, Indonesia

The International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) Hubert Bals Fund has picked twelve feature films for its development support scheme, backing each project with €10,000 ($10,500) in production financing. The selection comes after the fund received more than 1,150 submissions, a new record.

Several IFFR alumni filmmakers are among the recipients. Brazilian filmmaker Lillah Hallah, whose Levante won the Youth Jury Award at IFFR 2024, will receive support for Colhões de Ouro, a dark musical comedy. Midhun Murali, who won a Tiger Special Jury Award for Kiss Wagon, secures backing for his new project MTV i.e. Mars to Venus.

Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan, known for The Reports on Sarah and Saleem and A House in Jerusalem, receives funding for Conversation with the Sea. The film follows a Palestinian man ordered to pay his deceased son’s debt.

Christopher Murray’s Piedras gigantes will be one of the first Chilean fiction features shot on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), while Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini will get Hubert Bals funding for Four Seasons in Java. Other notable projects include Una Gunjak’s How Melissa Blew a Fuse and Daphne Xu’s Notes of a Crocodile. The complete selection also includes Darya Zhuk’s Exactly What It Seems, Theo Montoya’s Falso positivo, Elene Mikaberidze’s Le goût de la pêche, and Kasım Ördek’s Goodbye for Now.

Fund head Tamara Tatishvili noted that the selected filmmakers share an active approach to storytelling amid current challenges, choosing to speak up through their artistry rather than remaining silent.

The Hubert Bals fund focuses on filmmakers from countries where local film funding and infrastructure is either lacking or politically restrictive. The fund closely collaborates with IFFR’s other industry activities, including its talent development section and co-production market CineMart.

Previous Hubert Bals grant recipients include Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light and Baby by Marcelo Caetano, both Cannes festival winners this year; Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity, winner of the Golden Leopard in Locarno’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente program, which puts the spotlight on first and second features; and Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown, which took the audience aware at this year’s Thessaloniki film festival.

IFFR’s 54th edition runs Jan. 30-Feb. 9. The festival will unveil its full program on Dec. 17.