Berlinale World Cinema Fund: Twelve New Funding Recommendations

In the 33rd jury session of the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (WCF), the juries made twelve funding recommendations for projects from Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, Senegal and Turkey. The current funding amounts to a total of 592,000 Euros. This means that the funding volume has increased by 49.85% since the last funding round. The WCF is pleased to be able to support independent cinema even more strongly in times of crisis and to promote the visibility of the cultural complexity of our world.

“Versatile documentary forms and feature films that also innovatively deal with genre elements stood out in the current funding round. The directors tackle political and social realities with strong film aesthetics. You can also discover projects that arise from unusual co-production structures and thus pave the way for further new cooperation opportunities”, comments Vincenzo Bugno, the head of the WCF.

Since 2004, the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (WCF) has been successfully supporting film production in regions characterised by an insufficient film infrastructure by virtue of its increasingly differentiated funding programme (WCF, WCF Europe, WCF Africa, WCF ACP) and advocating cultural diversity in German cinemas. The cooperation between production companies from the production regions or countries and German / European production companies is supported as well:

https://www.berlinale.de/en/world-cinema-fund/home/profile.html

Currently, the WCF has also awarded two prizes together with its partners:

·        Doc Award World Cinema Fund / Goethe-Institut at the Ouaga Film Lab in Burkina Faso: And Who Will Cook? Director: Samira Vera-Cruz, Production: Kriolscope Film (Cape Verde Islands). Advising on project development and production of a documentary film in 2021.

·        WCF Audience Design Award at the international co-production meeting “Brasil CineMundi”: Casa no campo, director: Davi Pretto (Brazil). Production: Tokyo Filmes (Brazil), Paola Wink and Dublin Films (France), David Hurst. The award consists of consultation and mentoring for the development of an audience design strategy.

Find here the decisions of the 33rd WCF jury session on the twelve funding recommendations:

https://www.berlinale.de/en/world-cinema-fund/news/news.html#dec-2020

The new application deadline for future productions has been brought forward by one month and is therefore ending on February 1, 2021.