New films from well-known authors such as Tropical Maradi director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Romania’s Corneliu Porumboiu and Mexico’s Tatiana Hueso are among the first 14 films selected to benefit from the newly launched Fondazione Prada Film Fund.
The Prada Foundation’s Film Fund, whose head was present at the Berlinale, was officially launched in Venice last year with a total pot of 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) to support independent films from around the world without restrictions on theme, genre, language or other types of criteria.
The projects were selected by Fondazione Prada from a pool of over 1,200 applications and came from 26 countries on five continents. Of the 14 selected features, 4 are in development, 9 are in production, and 1 is in post. It is directed by six women and eight men and includes two debuts.
“The quality and experimentation of the selected projects demonstrate the dynamic nature and diversity that characterizes contemporary independent cinema,” Miuccia Prada, owner of the Italian luxury brand Prada and president of the Fondazione Prada, a cultural institution she founded with her husband Patrizio Bertelli in 1993, said in a statement.
“Through the Film Fund, we aim to promote the work of writers, especially those who most need concrete support to turn their visions into reality,” she added. “In the future, Fondazione Prada will continue to promote the idea of free, demanding and visionary cinema by building an even stronger dialogue with those who conceive, develop and produce films.”
The Fondazione Prada Film Fund provides three types of support: development, production and post. The maximum amount of funding a project can receive is 250,000 euros ($296,000) for production.
The fund is being run by former Directors Fortnite chief Paolo Moretti in collaboration with film programmer Rebecca de Paz.
Echoing the words of Miuccia Prada, Moretti emphasized that the Fondazione Prada Fund was “born out of the recognition that contemporary independent cinema is undergoing a period of profound structural weakness and, at the same time, artistic vitality.”
“Many of the most ambitious works in terms of research and formal experimentation are finding it increasingly difficult to find suitable production support. The Film Fund is being considered to support this research through a number of stages.”
“The selected projects reflect a wide range of sensibilities, geographies and approaches, and share a high level of formal awareness and a clear artistic vision. Our goal is to help create the right productive conditions for rigorous and innovative research to continue to take full shape,” Moretti continued to point out.
Under Mr. Moretti’s leadership, the foundation’s Cinema Godard cinema (pictured above) has strengthened its screening series and onstage conversations with notable directors such as Alfonso Cuaron, Xavier Dolan, Luca Guadagnino, Werner Herzog, Jia Zhangke, and Rebecca Zlotowski, to name a few.
The projects initially selected by the Fondazione Prada Film Fund are:
“Amarcord ’90” (tentative title) – Yuri Ancarani (Italy) – Phase: Development
“Caption Required” – Natalia Almada (Mexico, USA) – Phase: Production
“Cosmofonia” – Verena Paravel (France, UK) – Phase: Development
“Galerna” – Tatiana Huezo (Mexico, Spain, Switzerland) – Phase: Production
“Jenjira’s Grand Dream” – Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Colombia, Netherlands, France, Mexico, Thailand) – Phase: Production
“Las Italianas” – Laura Citarella (Argentina, France, Germany, Italy) – Phase: Development
“Mulatresse Solitude” – Baloji (Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo) – Stage: Production
“On Land and Sea” – Hlynur Pálmason (Denmark, Iceland, France, Finland, Sweden) – Stage: Production
“Summer in Heat” – Levan Akin (Sweden, Germany, France) – Phase: Production
“Costume” – Corneliu Porumboiu (France, Germany, Romania) – Stage: Production
“The Difficult Bride” – Rubaiyat Hossain (Bangladesh, France, Portugal, Norway, Germany) – Phase: Post-production
“The Hallucinations” – Andrea Gatopoulos (France, Italy, Greece) – Phase: Development
“The Human Purge” – Eduardo Williams (Argentina) – Phase: Production
“The Sleeping Woman” – Daria Martin (UK, Ireland) – Phase: Production
