Budapest International Film Festival (BIFF) is building a film funding initiative independent of the Hungarian state, as the festival’s first edition gets underway today (Tuesday, October 29).
The fund will launch during the festival, which runs from October 29 to November 3 at the Corvin Cinema Budapest.
The fund will be run in collaboration with the Sandor Simo Foundation, and will support at least one Hungarian feature film and a short film, from script development through to theatrical release. It will aim to raise between €500,000 to €1m in its first year, which organisers say is the current average budget of an independent Hungarian feature film.
The money will be raised from private investment, and will request contributions from international productions that use Hungary as a location, as a way of reinvesting in the country’s film talent.
It is open to projects from first- and second-time filmmakers who already have a production company attached.
The selection committee will be chaired by leading Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi, and will operate independently of the Hungarian state in both its funding and decision-making process.
The fund aims to expand its activities to offering scholarships to Hungarian film school students, for future editions.
First festival
The first BIFF opens with the Hungarian premiere of Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig in its International Competition, and closes with Rich Peppiatt’s Irish Oscar entry Kneecap as a special screening.
The 10-strong international competition consists of festival hits from the year so far, including Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, Andrea Arnold’s Bird and Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow. A BIFF audience award will be presented at the end of the festival.
There will also be a special screening of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, about a Hungarian architect who flees the country for the US, in its Hungarian premiere; and sections titled Snapshots from Another World: Experimental Cinema and Retrospective: 100 years Investigating Sherlock, 100 Years Investigating Cinema.
A nascent industry strand includes an exhibition of behind-the-scenes photos by Hungarian cinematographers, including Marcell Rev and Matyas Erdely.
The festival is sponsored by Warner Bros Discovery, financial services company Erste Group and wine retailer Bortarsasag.
BIFF 2024 International Competition
The Seed of the Sacred Fig, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
All We Imagine As Light, dir. Payal Kapadia
Animal, dir. Sofia Exarchou
Bird, dir. Andrea Arnold
Caught by the Tides, dir. Jia Zhangke
I Saw the TV Glow, dir. Jane Schoenbrun
Misericordia, dir. Alain Guiraudie
The Devil’s Bath, dirs. Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala
The Echo, dir. Tatiana Huezo)
The Story of Souleymane, dir. Boris Lajkine
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