Venice title ‘Heartless’ and Burak Cevik drama among 13 projects backed by Berlinale World Cinema Fund

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Heartless

Source: The Party Film Sales

‘Heartless’

The Berlinale’s World Cinema Fund (WCF) has revealed 13 features it will support with a share of $380,000 (€345,000) in production and distribution funding.

Projects include Nothing In Its Place by Turkish filmmaker Burak Çevik, whose features The Pillar Of Salt, Belonging and Forms Of Forgetting each premiered at the Berlinale Forum.

His latest focuses on one of Turkey’s most bloody political massacres, which took place in the country’s capital of Ankara in 1978, and focuses on the night when a group of leftist youths who believed in unarmed revolution gathered at home and were raided by fascists.

It will receive $36,000 (€33,000) in production support, having recently won a top prize at South Korea’s Jeonju Cinema Project. Producers are Çevik for Turkey’s Fol Film and Zsuzsanna Kiràly for Germany’s Flaneur Films.

Also selected is Heartless from Brazil’s Nara Normande and Tião, which is set to premiere in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival next month and is based on their short of the same name that won the Illy Prize when it played in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2014. The feature received $27,500 (€25,000) in funding.

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The latest round of WCF funding saw projects selected from Bhutan, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Madagascar, Nepal, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Filmmakers include Somalia’s Mo Harawe, whose short Will My Parents Come To See Me played at the 2022 Berlinale and has received support for debut feature The Village Next To Paradise; Nepal’s Abinash Bikram Shah, who secured a special mention when his short Lori played at Cannes in 2022 and will make his feature debut with The Village Next To Paradise; and Venezuela’s Michael Labarca, who was nominated for Cannes’ Cinefondation Award in 2016 with short The Guilt, Probably and will make his feature debut with Muchachos Bañándose En El Lago.

The WCF jury made its selection from 140 submitted projects from a total of 50 countries.

The Berlinale’s funding initiative was set up in 2004 to support projects from countries with a less robust filmmaking infrastructure and advocate cultural diversity in German cinemas. It is run by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and Berlin International Film Festival, in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office, with further support from the Goethe-Institut.

WCF Production Funding

A Bright Future (Uru-Ger)
Dir Lucía Garibaldi
Prods Montelona, Francisco Magnou Arnabal; Achtung Panda!, Jamila Wenske
Funding €35,000

Athlete (Turkey-Ger)
Dirs Semih Gülen, Mustafa Emin Büyükcoşkun
Prods Amok Film, Amok Film UG, Arda Çiltepe
Funding €25,000

Nothing In Its Place (Turkey-Ger)
Dir Burak Çevik
Prods Fol Film, Burak Çevik; Flaneur Films, Zsuzsanna Kiràly
Funding €33,000

The Village Next To Paradise (Somalia-Ger)
Dir Mo Harawe
Prods Koor Films, Nuh Musse Berjeeb; NiKo Film, Nicole Gerhards
Funding €45,000

Elephants in the Fog (Nepal-Ger-Fr)
Dir Abinash Bikram Shah
Prods Underground Talkies, Anup Poudel; Die Gesellschaft DGS, Michael Henrichs; Les Valseurs
Funding €40,000

WCF Europe

Heartless (Sem Coração) (Bra-Fr-It)
Dirs Nara Normande, Tião
Prods Cinemascópio Produções Cinematográficas e Artísticas Ltda, Emilie Lesclaux; Les Valseurs, Justin Pechberty; Nadia Trevisan, Nefertiti Films
Funding €25,000

I The Song (Bhutan-Fr)
Dir Dechen Roder
Prods Dakinny Productions, Dechen Roder; Girelle Production, Johann Chapelan
Funding €30,000

Muchachos Bañándose En El Lago (Ven-Fr)
Dir Michael Labarca
Prods Todos los Ríos, Patricia Ramírez-Arévalo; Ticket Shoot Films, René Osi
Funding €35,000

WCF Africa

Disco Afrika (Madagascar-Ger-Fr)
Dir Luck Razanajaona
Prods Africamadavibe Production, Herizo Rabary; NiKo Film, Nicole Gerhards; We Film, Jonathan Rubin
Funding €35,000

Khartoum Bites (Suan-Ger) documentary
Dirs Mohamed Subahi, Areej Ezz’el’din Zarroug
Prods Sudan Film Factory (Sudan), Talal Afifi; Light Echo Pictures GbR (Germany), Frank Albers
Funding €20,000