Uruguayan filmmaker Lucía Garibaldi (who premiered The Sharks at Sundance in 2019), Abinash Bikram Shah (short film winner in Cannes 2022), Burak Cevik (one third of the filmmaking team with Sofia Bohdanowicz and Blake Williams in A Woman Escapes) and the tandem of Nara Normande and Tião who are heading to Venice with Sem Coração are some of the filmmakers who’ll receive some coin via the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (WCF). Projects selected come from a bit everywhere on the globe: Bhutan, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Madagascar, Nepal, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela.
WCF Production Funding
A Bright Future (Uru-Ger)
Dir Lucía Garibaldi
Prods Montelona, Francisco Magnou Arnabal; Achtung Panda!, Jamila Wenske
Funding €35,000
Athlete (Turkey-Ger)
Dirs Semih Gülen, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun
Prods Amok Film, Amok Film UG, Arda Çiltepe
Funding €25,000
Nothing In Its Place (Turkey-Ger)
Dir Burak Çevik
Prods Fol Film, Burak Çevik; Flaneur Films, Zsuzsanna Kiràly
Funding €33,000
The Village Next To Paradise (Somalia-Ger)
Dir Mo Harawe
Prods Koor Films, Nuh Musse Berjeeb; NiKo Film, Nicole Gerhards
Funding €45,000
Elephants in the Fog (Nepal-Ger)
Dir Abinash Bikram Shah
Prods Underground Talkies, Anup Poudel; Die Gesellschaft DGS, Michael Henrichs
Funding €40,000
WCF Europe
Heartless (Sem Coração) (Bra)
Dirs Nara Normande, Tião
Prods Cinemascópio Produções Cinematográficas e Artísticas Ltda, Emilie Lesclaux; Les Valseurs, Justin Pechberty
Funding €25,000
I The Song (Bhutan-Fr)
Dir Dechen Roder
Prods Dakinny Productions, Dechen Roder; Girelle Production, Johann Chapelan
Funding €30,000
Muchachos Bañándose En El Lago (Ven-Fr)
Dir Michael Labarca
Prods Todos los Ríos, Patricia Ramírez-Arévalo; Ticket Shoot Films, René Osi
Funding €35,000
WCF Africa
Disco Afrika (Madagascar-Ger-Fr)
Dir Luck Razanajaona
Prods Africamadavibe Production, Herizo Rabary; NiKo Film, Nicole Gerhards; We Film, Jonathan Rubin
Funding €35,000
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
