World Cinema Fund: Current Funding Recommendations and TUI Care Foundation Award

At the 42nd jury session of the Berlinale World Cinema Fund (WCF), the juries made twelve funding recommendations for projects from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Mexico, Panama, Sudan, Tunisia, Ukraine and Venezuela. The current funding includes €525,000 for twelve production grants and two distribution grants, plus an additional €40,000 for the TUI Care Foundation Award.

The jury also decided on the TUI Care Foundation Award. By creating an annual award of the TUI Colourful Cultures Programme of the TUI Care Foundation, in cooperation with the WCF, film projects from African countries can receive financial support.

The WCF was founded in November 2004 with the aim of developing strategies to democratize international film production. Back then, a substantial presence of works from the WCF regions in the global film industry was rare and the connection to the audience was not guaranteed. The increasing success of WCF funded films with critics and audiences is particularly evident when looking at the current programmes of renowned international film festivals. The 42nd jury session was the final in the tenure of WCF head Vincenzo Bugno, who hands over to incoming head Sata Cissokho at the end of the year.

“The world we live in is characterised by complex and intertwined crises that raise questions about the future and social cohesion. The work of the WCF enables us to engage deeply with multifaceted and sometimes contradictory universes, to give them a voice, and to materialise these countless realities. The WCF-films give us hope, and make it clear that we must be active in the world. The filmmakers do this by finding cinematic languages and artistic profiles that fascinate us anew each time. Their stories and characters move us. We experienced this again during the last jury meeting. We are delighted to be able to contribute to the realisation of projects that come to us from very different cultural and artistic realities. Cinema will not change the world, but it will certainly bring us closer together,” says Vincenzo Bugno, head of the WCF.

The Funding Recommendations of the 42nd Jury Session

The WCF jury made its selection from 236 submitted projects from a total of 63 countries. The funding recommendations encompass funding in the amount of 565,000 euros.

The members of the jury are the documentary film producer, author and creative advisor Marta Andreu (Spain); the director, screenwriter and producer Ayşe Polat (Germany); film scholar and curator Viola Shafik (Germany / Egypt) and the head of the WCF, Vincenzo Bugno (Italy / Germany).

Production Funding WCF

Blue Card, director: Mohammed Alomda (Sudan). Production: Station Films (Sudan), Amjad Abu Alalala; Mayana Films (Germany), May Odeh. Feature film.
Funding: €40,000

Canciones perdidas (Lost Songs), director: Mauricio Miguel Quiroga Russo “Kiro Russo” (Bolivia). Production: Socavón (Bolivia), Kiro Russo; Nabis Film Berlin GmbH (Germany), Lukas Rinner. Feature film.
Funding: €60,000
The director Mauricio Miguel Quiroga Russo participated in Berlinale Talents in 2013.

Muchachos bañándose en el lago (Kids Swimming in the Lake), director: Michael Labarca (Venezuela). Production: Todos los Ríos (Venezuela), Patricia Ramírez Arévalo; Black Forest Films GmbH (Germany), Josune Hahnhaiser. Feature film.
Funding: €40,000

Os dez terrenos de meu pai (My Father’s Estate), director: Liliana Sulzbach & Orson Soares (Brazil). Production: Tempo Porto Alegre (Brazil), Liliana Sulzbach; Weltfilm GmbH (Germany), Kristina Konrad.
Documentary form.
Funding: €30,000

Suraiya, director: Robiul Alam Robi (Bangladesh). Production: Ratherhood Initiatives Ltd (Bangladesh), Fazle Hasan. Feature film.
Funding: €40,000

The Blue Sweater with a Yellow Hole (Блакитний светр із жовтою діркою), director: Tetiana Khodakivska (Ukraine). Production: Pronto Film (Ukraine), Elena Saulich. Documentary form.
Funding: €30,000

The Siren Song (El canto de la sirena), director: Eden Bernal Ponce (Mexico). Production: Sinapsis (Mexico), Eden Bernal Ponce.
Documentary form.
Funding: €30,000

To Leave, To Stay (Neak Tov, Neak Nov), director: Danech San (Cambodia). Production: Anti-Archive (Cambodia), Davy Chou.
Feature film.
Funding: €60,000

WCF Europe

Corte Culebra (Culebra Cut), director: Ana Elena Tejera (Panama). Production: Mestizo Cinema (Panama), Tomás Cortés; Fulgurance (France), Elisa Sepúlveda. Feature film.
Funding: €50,000
The director Ana Elena Tejera participated in Berlinale Talents in 2023.

Dear Tarkovsky, director: Firas Khoury (Palestine). Production: Atlas Vision (Tunisia), Asma Chiboub; Fox in the Snow (Sweden), Mata Reguera. Spielfilm.
Funding: €50,000
The director Firas Khoury participated in Berlinale Talents in 2008.

Dios y la cumbia del diablo (God and the Devil’s Cumbia), director: Carlos Lenin (Mexico). Production: Huasteca Films (Mexico), Paloma Petra & Colectivo Colmena (Mexico), Daniel Loustaunau; Potenza Producciones SL (Spain), Carlo D’Ursi Fortunato. Feature film.
Funding: €45,000
The director Carlos Lenin participated in Berlinale Talents in 2019.
The project was presented at the Talent Project Market in 2023.

Le Parcours (The Circuit), director: Arice Siapi (Cameroon). Production: Timeline (Cameroon), Martinel Nemalieu; Dryades Films (France), Eléonore Boissinot. Documentary form.
Funding: €30,000

Distribution Funding for Cinema Release in Germany

Dry Leaf, director: Alexandre Koberidze (Georgia). Distribution: Grandfilm. Feature film.
German Cinema release: April 9, 2026.
Funding: €10,000

The Mysterious Gaze Of the Flamingo, director: Diego Céspedes (Chile). Distribution: Filmreederei GmbH. Feature film.
German cinema release: December 4, 2025.
Funding: €10,000

TUI Care Foundation Award

Since 2024, the TUI Colourful Cultures programme of the TUI Care Foundation has endowed an annual award to financially support outstanding film projects from Africa. This year, the jury of the World Cinema Fund has decided in favour of the project Plastic Atlantis from Cape Verde as this year’s winner of the TUI Care Foundation Award.

Plastic Atlantis, director: Samira Vera-Cruz (Cape Verde). Production: KS Cinema (Cape Verde), Pedro Soulé; Seera Films (Germany), Kesmat El Sayed. Documentary form.
Funding: €40,000 endowed by TUI Care Foundation

General information on the WCF funding.

The World Cinema Fund is one of the Berlinale’s industry initiatives run under the banner of Berlinale Pro.

The World Cinema Fund is an initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Berlin International Film Festival.
The special WCF Europe programme was launched with the support of the European Union’s Creative Europe MEDIA programme.