Hubert Bals Fund Plus gives $280,000 to Dutch co-productions

Circe Films, IDTV Motel Films, Volya Films and Waterland Film will receive $69,969 (€50,000) each to produce four films.

The projects are:

• Circe is co-producing Seyfi Teoman’s Our Grand Despair with Bulut Films (Turkey) and Unafilm (Germany). It is Teoman’s second feature, after Summer Book, tells the story of a love triangle between to two men and their close friend’s younger sister. The feature received Hubert Bals Fund script development support in 2008 and was in Cannes Atelier this year.
  
  
• IDTV is to co-produce Los Ultimos Cristeros (The Last Cristeros) with Mexican  production companies Una Comunión and Axolote Cine. Mexican Matías Meyer’s film is about a cristeros (catholic peasant) colonel leading six men the sierra. As their mission becomes increasingly difficult, they make an oath to God to due in the name of Christ. It also received script development support from the fund.
  
  
• Volya is co-producing Saodate Ismailova’s 40 Kun Chilla (40 Days of Silence). The Uzbek project received script development support from Hubert Bals in 2007 and was also in Cannes Ateliers this year. Rohfilm (Germany) and Atopic (France) are co-producing Ismailova’s debut feature, which will look at the difficulties of women living in traditional cultures in a modern world.
  
  
• Waterland is co-producing the first feature from Milagros Mumenthaler, Ausencias (Absences). The film will tell the story of sisters, Marina, Sofia and Violeta as they deal with the death of the grandmother that raised them. It is being coproduced by Ruda Cine (Argentina) and also received script development support from the fund and was selected for CineMart 2008.

Iwana Chronis, manager of the Hubert Bals Fund, said: “We are pleased that the HBF Plus programme is encouraging an increasing number of Dutch film producers to get involved in projects by filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and parts of Eastern Europe, creating new opportunities for both parties.”

The HBF Plus initiative, which was launched in 2006, aims to encourage Dutch producer to get involved with films already supported by Rotterdam’s HBF, which supports filmmakers in developing countries with script development, post-production and distribution.