International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) is to back 20 projects with a €10,000 grant each under its Development Support Scheme 2026.
Funding recipients for upcoming feature projects include Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir, whose debut feature City of Wind, premiered in Venice Horizons in 2023; Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, who won the Berlinale Silver Bear for best director with his 2024 drama Pepe; and Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, whose drama The Tribe won Cannes’ Critics’ Week top prize in 2014.
Scroll down for full list of projects
Several IFFR alumni have received backing for their projects, including two IFFR Tiger Short Award-winners making their feature debuts: Dean Wei, whose The Apple Doesn’t Fall…, played at the festival and Anka Gujabidze, who premiered her short Temo Re in 2025.
Ukrainian filmmaker Philip Sotnychenko, who won the Fipresci prize at IFFR for 2023’s La Palisiada, is also backed.
Funding for the Development Support Scheme has increased by a third this year, with 20 projects backed compared to 15 last year.
Eight of the 20 projects have been selected following a regional focus on East Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia.
The cohort features a number of projects that deal with themes of displacement, migration and belonging, and there is also a strong African presence in the selection.
Tamara Tatishvili, head of the Hubert Bals Fund, said: “In times where development funding is increasingly under threat, it’s remarkable that we’ve been able to increase our grant allocation, from 15 in 2025 to 20 in 2026. This includes a welcome regional focus on Southeast Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, ensuring our support reaches areas typically underrepresented in funding decisions.”
HBF Development Support 2026 selection:
(Synopses provided by Hubert Bals Fund)
The Apple Doesn’t Fall… (China)
Dir. Dean Wei
A comedy set within a dense residential compound where the lives of several families intersect. At its heart is 17-year-old dance student Xiaoliu, who returns home on leave after an unsettling encounter at school leaves her mute. As the Liu family struggles to maintain the illusion of unity, Xiaoliu’s body begins to undergo an inexplicable transformation.
As Long As You Can Climb A Tree (N.Mac)
Dir. Dina Duma
A tragicomic portrait of ageing and of people who continue searching for meaning while the world slowly erases them. After retiring from factory work, 65-year-old Bozana discovers her pension is too small to attend her son’s wedding abroad. Desperate for money, she joins a scheme in which elderly villagers fake dog attacks to claim state compensation. Through this journey, she confronts her loneliness, grief, and longing for connection, ultimately finding a hard-won sense of freedom.
Avisan Los Animales (Mex)
Dir. Virginia Urreiztieta
After saving her mother from a suicide attempt, Anick (14), living in the southern Mexican jungle, turns to an evangelical healer for help. As a military railway project scars the land and a jaguar emerges as both threat and omen, she must choose between faith, survival, and the darkness she fears inheriting.
Bakhmaro – Invisible Formula (Georgia)
Dir. Anka Gujabidze
The morning mist—the child’s footprints already fading. A boy with a lung disease can only be healed by the magical mist of Bakhmaro. As past and present echo through the mountains, human encroachment and indifference threaten to erase their unique spirit, and his story becomes a reflection of an age-old, unequal struggle.
Carousel (Ukr-Neth)
Dir. Philip Sotnychenko
During the war, a journalist who is supposed to document the invasion finds an old VHS camera at his parents’ home and begins filming his own life but gradually loses connection with his loved ones and misses the birth of his son, who is later seen sitting alone on a carousel.
Half Sea (Ind)
Dir. Sheethal Namath Shyam
In their grandmother’s home in a small town on the Malabar coast, an audio-recorder draws Meen into a world of traces.
Deus Ex Machina (Ukr)
Dir. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
A reconstruction of the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant by Russian forces – a true story of courage and betrayal.
Filme De Arquivo (Bra-Suda-Ken-Fr-Por)
Dir. Lincoln Péricles
A film archive researcher with the rare ability to physically enter archival films is hired to investigate erased family histories, but each journey into the archive brings image and reality closer to collapse.
Hear What You Remember (Aze-Tur)
Dir. Turkan Huseyn
To provide the key testimony in a murder trial, a woman must reconstruct a suppressed memory while resisting the manipulative forces determined to shape her version of the truth.
Home, Sick (China-Fr-Neth-Port)
Dir. Xiwen Cong
Zheng Tian, a Chinese student in France, returns to her hometown for the last winter break before graduation. Standing at a crossroads, she must decide whether to build a life abroad or come back to the place she once called home.
In The Wake Of Yesterday (Nigeria-UK)
Dir. Babatunde Apalowo
When a records keeper in a drought-governed Sahel village refuses to register her unborn child under a false name, she is exiled into the desert, where she discovers the archive that condemned her is only one fragment of a vast system stretching far beyond her world.
Lady Pearl (S.Africa)
Dir. Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi
A low-wage employee of an enigmatic luxury hotel nicknamed Lady Pearl is rewarded with a single night’s stay during the low season. As her family gradually arrives to claim the reward alongside her, they are mistaken for paying guests, and the promised night inexplicably distends into an endless stay, exposing the hotel’s glamour as an elegant mirage built on exploitation.
The Memory Of Hair (Serbia-Fr-Croatia)
Dir. Dušan Zorić, Matija Gluščević
Every night, Mihajlo wakes to the same nightmare: terrifying hair on the pillow beside him that vanishes the moment he turns on the light. As he descends into buried family memories and personal anxieties, a portal opens to a parallel reality where the mysterious hair will reclaim its body.
Murmur (Srb)
Dir. Mina Đukić
As the ice melts between their open palms, time flows backwards, revealing two strangers bound by a silent recognition and a love that longs for neither shape nor certainty, but only the grace of existing.
Silver Linings (Ind)
Dir. Kanishka Sonthalia, Siddesh Shetty
Older adults across India slip into friendship clubs and speed-dating events, searching for love while negotiating how openly it can be lived.
Te Vienen A Quitar Tus Congos (Dom Rep-Sp)
Dir. Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias
Santo Domingo, the first laboratory of modernity. The wind carries women through forests, kitchens, archives, and forgotten rivers, tracing the lingering echoes of the Spanish Empire across the Caribbean, where race was invented, where the human became a question, where the dead continue to speak, and where the logic of empire never ceased to change its name.
Um Lugar Fora Do Mundo (Brazil-Cuba)
Dir. Marcel Beltrán
Clara, a 65-year-old Cuban artist, recently immigrated to São Paulo. Far from her homeland, she works as a supermarket cashier to support herself. When her son decides to leave the country seeking a different path, she chooses to stay. Each night, she spends hours creating her artwork until this immense, foreign city becomes her own.
The Vision Of Lonely Mountains (Mongolia-Fr)
Dir. Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir
A 35-year-old sumo wrestler of Mongolian origin is ordered by his doctor to stop his dependency on sleeping pills and listen to ocean sounds instead. Guided by the haunting song of whales, he goes on a spiritual journey, coping with the abandonment of his father when he was a child and grappling with the loneliness and violence that is ingrained in his life.
Donde Duermen Las Abejas (Dom Rep)
Dir. Tomás Espaillat, Nika Zhukova
Two people rescue each other from loneliness just when they need it most. Their bond becomes a home that endures over time.
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