The Visions Sud Est fund, dedicated to supporting the production or postproduction of feature films or documentaries from Africa, Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe, will officially close its doors at the end of September 2026 due to funding cuts announced by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
However, the fund will still be involved as a sponsor of the two awards it presents during Visions du Réel’s (VdR) industry platform and Locarno’s Open Doors programme in 2026.
Project manager Madeline Robert confirmed the fund, a joint initiative between the film festivals in Locarno, Fribourg, Nyon and Winterthur with the trigon-film Foundation, had its final call for projects on August 1.
Around 200 projects were submitted by the deadline and the decisions on the final selection of grants for production or postproduction will be made by mid-December.
“While the fund itself will cease operations, we are exploring ways to ensure follow-up for the supported projects in collaboration with our partners,” Robert suggested.
Since its launch in 2005, 187 films supported by the fund have been completed, including most recently such films as All We Imagine As Light, Pepe, Viet and Nam, and Tiger Stripes.
Venice and Toronto
Robert said that the coming weeks will see four world premieres of films backed with visions sud est production or postproduction grants.
Iranian director Ali Asgari’s satire Divine Comedy is screening in Venice Horizons while Iranian documentary Past Future Continuous co-directed by Firouzeh Khosrovani and Morteza Ahmadvand and A Sad And Beautiful World by Lebanese filmmaker Cyril Aris are both selected for Giornate degli Autori.
The fund will be represented in Toronto next month with the world premiere in the Centrepiece programme of Bolivian director Álvari Olmos Torrico’s indigenous coming-of-age tale The Condor Daughter.
Until now, fiction feature film projects were able to receive up to CHF 50,000 for production or up to CHF 20,000 for postproduction, while documentaries were supported with up to CHF 20,000 for production or CHF 10,000 for postproduction from the fund.
No comments yet