Last year the likes of Nara Normande and Tião (Venice 2023 selected Sem Coração) and Mo Harawe’s (Cannes 2024 selected The Village next to Paradise) received coin for their feature film projects. Coming from countries such as Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Cameroon, Egypt, Iran, Lesotho, Nepal and Sudan, this year’s batch of ten Berlinale World Cinema Fund seelected projects include the latest from Lisandro Alonso – a new “sequel” project that we reported on last April. La Libertad doble will see Alonso revisit the protagonist (as well as the filmmaking methods) he employed for his 2001 Un Certain Regard selected La Libertad. Berlin based Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese artist/filmmaker saw his fiction debut This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection received acclaim at Venice and Sundance – his next project sees him return to the docu form and is titled Ancestral Visions of the Future. This we believe is based on an installation project that among things discusses the collective African consciousness beyond slavery and colonialism. And Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mostafa whose Aisha Can’t Fly Away recently received some coin via the Final Cut in Venice lab will receive coin for his project – we imagine film fest programmers will be looking out for this project. It tells the story of a Somali woman named Aisha, a 26-year-old African immigrant caregiver residing in Ain-shams, a Cairo neighborhood with a large African migrant community.
WCF
I’m Coming for You, director: Cyrielle Raingou (Cameroon). Production: JCMR Production (Cameroon), Liza Ndakopumba; Seera Films (Germany), Kesmat Elsayed. Feature film.
Red Mist Descending, director: Rakhsan Banietemad (Iran). Production: Mind Doc Film Production (Iran), Mina Keshavarz; Weydemann Bros. (Germany), Jonas Weydemann. Feature film.
La libertad doble, director: Lisandro Alonso (Argentina). Production: 4L (Argentina), Lisandro Alonso; The Match Factory (Germany), Viola Fügen. Feature film.
Aisha Can’t Fly Anymore, director: Morad Mostafa (Egypt). Production: Bonanza Films (Egypt), Sawsan Yusuf. Feature film.
A Margem do Rio, director: Matheus Farias & Enock Carvalho (Brazil). Production: Gatopardo Filmes (Brazil), Enock Carvalho. Feature film.
You Don’t Die Two Times, director: Ager Oueslati (Algeria). Production: Taswir Edition Production (Algeria), Raouf Oueslati. Documentary form.
WCF Europe
Ancestral Visions of the Future, director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho). Production: Mokoro Street Media (Lesotho), Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese; Agat Films (France), Marie Balducchi; Seera Films (Germany), Laura Kloeckner. Documentary form.
The Sky is Mine, director: Deepak Rauniyar (Nepal). Production: Aadifilms (Nepal), Deepak Rauniyar; Tannhauser Gate (Norway), Alan R. Miligan. Feature film.
