IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) unveils support for 15 feature film projects

..to receive €10,000 Development Support scheme grants.

Concept still: Tears by Moise Ganza

The Hubert Bals Fund is announcing 15 grant recipients for its Development Support scheme, from a pool of over 900 projects submitted for consideration. For the very first time the HBF is backing a project from Tanzania, which joins projects from a number of territories rarely supported in the Fund’s history. Filmmakers from Syria, Albania, Cuba are notable inclusions in this round, as well as a further three projects from sub-Saharan Africa: Mozambique, Rwanda and Senegal.

IFFR alumni talent are present throughout the selection, including Timoteus Anggawan Kusno (IFFR 2025 Focus), Farida Baqi (The Visual Feminist Manifesto, IFFR 2025 Youth Jury Award), Stephanie Ricci (Those Who Move, IFFR 2025 Short & Mid-length), Renata Dzhalo (On This Land, IFFR 2025 Bright Future), Amanda Nell Eu (Tiger Stripes, HBF Development, NFF+HBF) and Mamadou Dia (Nafi’s Father, HBF Development, IFFR 2020).

This selection marks another milestone in an active period for the Hubert Bals Fund, following the announcement of the selected filmmakers for the pilot Displacement Film Fund ahead of Cannes, the launch of the new HBF+Brazil: Co-Development Support Scheme, as well as premieres and awards across the year’s festivals including Cannes, Locarno and Venice.

“We are proud to support a collection of carefully selected projects – bold, distinctive voices that reflect our commitment to breakthrough talent and the continued advancement of our alumni.”

Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the Hubert Bals Fund, said: “The Development Support scheme from the HBF is one of the very few working internationally that offers this kind of trust and funding to projects at their genesis, and provides a vital launchpad for artists. Seeking to maximise the impact of our funding decisions with this selection that has grown from 12 projects in 2024 to 15 in this round, we worked hard to identify the regions and territories we have historically been less present in. The artistic proposal remains the most central to our mission, and the number, quality and diversity of applications this year was as outstanding as ever. From this remarkable pool, we are proud to support a collection of carefully selected projects – bold, distinctive voices that reflect our commitment to breakthrough talent and the continued advancement of our alumni.”

HBF Development Support 2025 filmmakers

Development Support 2025 complete selection

Amateur, Carlos Díaz Lechuga, Cuba, Spain

The Appalling Human Voice of the Animals, Neritan Zinxhiria, Greece, Albania

Boca da noite, Stephanie Ricci, Brazil

Coumba, Mamadou Dia, Senegal

Girl With a Camera, Xiaoxuan Jiang, Hong Kong, China

The Immigrants, Suman Mukhopadhyay, India

Last Cow, Amil Shivji, Tanzania, Canada

Lotus Feet, Amanda Nell Eu, Malaysia

Moto, Chris Chong Chan Fui, Malaysia

Mwadia, Inadelso Cossa, Mozambique

Nobody to See Us, Renata Dzhalo, Kazakhstan, France, Moldova

Orphaned Atlas, Timoteus Anggawan Kusno, Indonesia

The Rapture, Farida Baqi, Syria, Lebanon, Germany, Netherlands

Tears, Moise Ganza, Rwanda

Where Shadows Wait, Arya Rothe, India, Italy

About the selection

In the remote Maasai village of Tanzanian filmmaker Amil Shivij’s satirical project Last Cow, a cow becomes a sensation after surviving an arrow to the neck, leading to a critique of conservation and tourism at the expense of indigenous communities and ancestral lands. His short film Shoeshine screened at IFFR 2014, before his feature Tug of War (2021) screened at TIFF and was Tanzania’s second ever submission to the Academy Awards. The project is co-produced by Ethiopian-Canadian producer and Rotterdam Lab alum Tamara Dawit.

Inadelso Cossa’s fiction feature debut Mwadia offers a surrealistic, magical realist reflection on Mozambique’s colonial past and present trauma, through a fable of a woman’s journey to save her husband. His award-winning The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder (2024) screened in Berlinale Forum and CPH:DOX, after his debut documentary Memory in Three Acts (2016) had its world premiere at IDFA.

Rwanda’s past and present are the subject of Moise Ganza’s debut feature project Tears, told through the story of Mugema, a YouTuber obsessed with finding the self-professed Kibogo, a mystical journey through a world of peculiar characters, sacrifices, rituals, cursed objects and the living dead.

HBF Development Support concept images, clockwise from top left: Last Cow, Orphaned Atlas, A Girl With a Camera, Nobody to See Us, Tears, Where Shadows Wait

Senegalese filmmaker Mamadou Dia’s HBF-backed debut, Nafi’s Father (IFFR 2020), won the Pardo d’Oro in Locarno’s Cineasti del Presente section in 2019. His latest project, Coumba, explores the place of rituals in an ever-changing society, following a detective returning to her hometown to investigate a murder tied to Coumba, a hoofed spirit, on the year’s first full moon.

Following a mercenary in Byzantium, Neritan Zinxhiria is supported for his feature debut The Appalling Human Voice of the Animals which proposes an archaeology of the future, driven by the tradition of ethnic songs and oral stories from Albania and Greece, his countries of origin. His Light of Light (2023) screened in the Tiger Short Competition at IFFR 2023.

Syrian filmmaker Farida Baqi’s The Visual Feminist Manifesto, a lyrical ode to the lives of women within a patriarchal system, won the IFFR 2025 Youth Jury Award. She’s supported for her next project, The Rapture, which explores the sexual awakening of an Arab woman in her 50s.

In 2025, IFFR presented a Focus programme on the Indonesian and Amsterdam-based visual artist and researcher Timoteus Anggawan Kusno whose work explores coloniality and its shadows. Set in a remote village surrounded by forest, his allegorical feature debut Orphaned Atlas will be a politically charged fable about state violence, inherited trauma, and the fragile resistance of memory.

Renata Dzhalo’s feature debut On This Land premiered in Bright Future at IFFR 2025, a striking black-and-white exploration of feudal cruelties in an 18th-century Russian village. In her supported project Nobody to See Us, she draws on her mother’s story to explore the cruelty of early-2000s Russia, as Olya seeks to divorce a vanished husband from Guinea-Bissau, father of her child.

Also tackling the theme of motherhood is Malaysian filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu, who offers a fantastical body horror take with Lotus Feet, drawing on the tale of the Malaysian folk monsteress known as the Penanggalan that haunts pregnant women and newborns. Her acclaimed HBF-backed Tiger Stripes won the top prize in the Semaine de la Critique in 2024 and was a Dutch co-production with Ellen Havenith of PRPL, who will also co-produce the upcoming feature.

Nell Eu’s compatriot Chris Chong Chan Fu takes us into the heart of Kuala Lumpur with Moto, as the encounters of a motorcyclist show us a glimpse of humanity amid the rapidly developing metropolis. His film Karaoke (2009) screened in Cannes Quinzaine des Cinéastes, whilst his installation work Heaven Hell (2009) was exhibited at Eye Filmmuseum.

Likewise, Brazilian filmmaker Stephanie Ricci’s project Boca da noite presents a vivid nocturnal portrait of São Paulo’s historic centre and its inhabitants, following the 70-year-old Areta’s adventure on the hunt for a 24-hour locksmith. Her short Quem se move screened in the IFFR 2025 Short & Mid-length programme, tracing the movements of a precarious young Brazilian in Lisbon.

Born and raised in Inner Mongolia, Xiaoxuan Jiang’s debut To Kill a Mongolian Horse had its world premiere in the Giornate degli Autori in Venice in 2024, where it won a Special Mention in the Authors Under 40 Award for Best Directing and Screenwriting. In her supported project Girl With a Camera, a young, ambitious scholar arrives at her remote field site in Inner Mongolia, where she has to confront the messy dynamics between scholar and subject.

Two projects by Indian filmmakers are awarded in the selection. Arya Rothe draws from her own upbringing in Where Shadows Wait as the 14-year-old Manu embarks on a magical realist journey to reconnect with her father in the last months of his life. Her co-directed project A Rifle and a Bag received a Special Mention in the Bright Future Competition at IFFR 2020.

Also presenting a tumultuous family history is Suman Mukhopadhyay, whose project The Immigrants is set against the backdrop of the 1947 Partition of India. It will be his tenth feature film, following his IFFR 2025 Big Screen Competition title, The Puppet’s Tale.

Upcoming HBF premieres in Locarno and Venice

Previous HBF recipients screening at Locarno include Desire Lines by Dane Komljen (HBF Development 2018, NFF+HBF 2022), which is featured in the International Competition. Becoming (formerly titled A Winner is Seen at the Start) by Zhannat Alshanova (HBF 2021, CineMart 2022, HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production 2023, NFF+HBF 2023), and Olivia by Sofía Petersen (HBF+Europe: Post-production 2023) both screen in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente.

Lucrecia Martel’s HBF-backed Nuestra Tierra (formerly titled Chocobar) has just been announced to have its world premiere out of competition in Venice, supported by the HBF Development Support scheme in 2019 and NFF+HBF in 2020. Additionally, the Sudan-set film Cotton Queen (HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production 2023) by Suzannah Mirghan is selected for Venice Critics’ Week.

HBF+Brazil deadline confirmed

Following the HBF Development selection, the HBF confirms the application deadline for the pilot edition of the HBF+Brazil: Co-development Support scheme for 15 September 23.59 CEST.

Together with its partners RioFilme, Spcine and Projeto Paradiso, the HBF+Brazil: Co-development Support initiative is dedicated to supporting the early development of projects by second- and third-time Brazilian filmmakers.