The Munich Film Up! mentoring and residency scheme for emerging filmmakers has unveiled the six participants for its fourth edition.
The seven-month programme is an initiative of the HFF München, with Tatino Films’ Pop Up Film Residency as content partner. It is run in association with the Filmschoolfest Munich with financial support from the Kirch Foundation, including a €5,000 cash prize for the winning project.
The selected participants have all recently graduated from film school and are developing their feature debut.
The six filmmakers are:
- Kyrgyzstan’s Aizada Amangeldy (VGI) whose project 18th Birthday draws inspiration from her own experience as she tells the story of what it feels like to be a queer Muslim teenage girl.
- Maximilian Bungarten (HFF München) who was nominated for the Best Queer Short award at the Clermont-Ferrand 2023 festival with The Age of Innocence. His debut film Bumper Cars takes place in the outskirts of Cologne and centers around themes of queer love, friendship and loss.
- Chheangkea Ieng (NYU), a Phnom Penh-born, Brooklyn-based filmmaker who seeks to showcase queer and Cambodian stories through his work. His debut Little Phnom Penh pays tribute to the history of his family and the Cambodian American community as well.
- Romanian experimental filmmaker Cristina Iliescu (UNATC). She is working on their debut film Nothing Sadder than a Limo, billed as a wild ride through the BTS experience of an assistant director working a reality dating show in Phuket.
- The Czech Republic’s Jakub Jirásek (FAMU), shortlisted for the BAFTA Student Award in 2020. His first feature project The Delivery focuses on generational gaps, societal expectations and socio-economic disparities with a comedic twist.
- Hanna Stock (HFF München). Her debut project Delulu is a coming-of-age movie set in a small Bavarian village that revolves around the blurred lines of consent and explores the need for validation.
Munich Film Up! is co-directed by Matthieu Darras and Elena Diesbach, with Ivana Hucikova and Antonia Lindner as programme co-managers. It kicked off yesterday (November 19) in Munich with a 5-day workshop at the HFF München during the Filmschoolfest Munich.
Each participant then has a three-week-long Pop Up Film Residency taking place in one of the residences of the network in February 2025. Hosts of these residencies include well-known producers.
Participants then meet again in Cannes during the film festival in May 2025 to present their film projects to industry representatives. One of the six presented projects will be awarded the Kirch Foundation Award.
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