New films by Jasmila Zbanić and Radu Jude are among 38 projects sharing almost €15m of production support from the Austrian Film Institute’s (ÖFI) selective funding programme, the ÖFI+ automatic incentive and the Vienna Film Fund
Vienna-based Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion received €175,000 from ÖFI’s project committee and €120,000 from the Vienna Film Fund for its minority participation in Zbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? - The Missing Part which will be the sequel to her award-winning war drama from 2020.
Produced by Zbanic’s own company Deblokada with partners such as Germany’s Razor Film (a co-producer of Quo Vadis, Aida?) and Poland’s Madants, the new film is set six months after the July 1995 genocide of Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica which was dramatised in Quo Vadis, Aida?. Out of desperation to find their husbands and sons, a group of women organise protests and private investigations. When Aida then receives the information that her husband and son are still alive, she begins the fight for the truth that everyone wants to hide.
Other projects supported by ÖFI’s project committee included Radu Jude’s comedy Dracula Park which promises to deliver the director’s unique take on the legendary figure. Jude’s project also received backing from the ÖFI+ automatic scheme based on a film’s Austrian spend.
Romanian director Jude, who won the Berlinale Golden Bear for Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn in 2021, has previously teased a few details of his Dracula project, saying at Locarno Film Festival this year that it was time that a Romanian made a Dracula film. “It’s only Hollywood that has done it 1,000 times,” he said. “We shouldn’t let Hollywood dominate our Dracula.”
The largest single amount paid out by ÖFI+ in this latest tranche - € 2.35m - went to Andreas Prochaska’s horror film Welcome Home which is being produced by Lotus Filmproduktion with Germany’s Senator Film, followed by €1.43m for Amour Fou Vienna’s production of Goran Rebic’s Hidden, a love story between a woman working in the office of the Protestant Church Council in wartime Vienna and a Jewish man she is hiding in her tiny service apartment.
The ÖFI+ scheme was also accessed by other international co-productions such as Mike van Diem’s adventure film Our Girls, Markus Schleinzer’s Rose, starring the Oscar-nominated German actress Sandra Hüller, and Komplizen Film’s production of Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure.
A total of €3.1m was paid out to eight fiction features and four documentaries by the ÖFI’s project committee, while the ÖFI+ automatic scheme allocated € 9.7m to 18 projects, and €1.99m was awarded to another eight projects by the Vienna Film Fund.
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