The International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund has recently announced the selection of its 2022 Script and Project Development program, including four female directors representing the Southern Cone: Argentine filmmakers Bárbara Sarasola-Day and Jazmín López, and Brazilian filmmakers Maíra Bühler and Everlane Moraes.
The Hubert Bals initiative dedicates itself to finding filmmakers that dive into national pasts to bring forth narratives that help shape the future and well-being of the human condition. Each of this year’s recipients will be awarded a grant of €10,000 to be spent on project development towards their next film.
Argentine director Sarasola-Day began her involvement in the film industry in 2000 as a producer and assistant director, at which point she decided to leverage her position to spotlight issues facing Argentinians across the globe. She directed her first short film Exodia in 2004, followed by her debut feature Belated / Des hora in 2014 and White Blood / Sangre blanca in 2018. As producer, she has worked on an extensive filmography including Benjamín Naishtat’s Rojo (2018) and Ulises Porra and Silvina Schnicer’s Carajita (2021). She has received the Hubert Bals grant to support her upcoming project Little War, which intends to tell the story of a family of English origin, mostly made up of women, living in Salta northern Argentina in 1982, during the Falklands War.
Argentine director López graduated from the Universidad de Cine in Buenos Aires with a degree in film direction and obtained a master’s degree in Studio Art from NYU. She gained critical acclaim through her 2012 debut film Leones, in which her characters attempted to process the aftermath of a devastating car crash. Selected for the Orizzonti competition in Venice, Leones was also previously supported by the Hubert Bals Fund. This time around, Lopez is being supported for her upcoming film Presidente, which explores the controversial history of Argentina’s first female president, Isabel Perón.
Brazilian director Maíra Bühler has dedicated herself to giving a voice to the lives of disadvantaged communities in São Paulo and Brazil more generally. Her latest documentary Let It Burn (2016) is a powerful and delicate portrait of the seven-floor Dom Pedro hostel in downtown São Paulo, which housed 107 homeless residents from marginalized communities, many of whom are struggling with drug addiction and the threat of eviction. Now, the Hubert Bals Fund will be supporting her upcoming project The Marriage, will depict the marriage of an indigenous girl to a much older white man, offering a radical alternative narrative. Her previous short film Diz a Ela que me Viu Chorar (2019) won the Special Jury Award at Havana and the Prix des Bibliothèques at Cinéma Du Réel in 2019.
Fellow Brazilian director Everlane Moraes’ work addresses subject matter that highlights the social, philosophical, and spiritual issues of the black diaspora. This mission led her to make her most recent short film Pattaki (2019), which was recognized by Sundance, BFI, and others and resulted in her forming and becoming creative director at the namesake production company PÀTTÀKI Audiovisual. Her upcoming project The Secret of Sikán plans to retell the fantastical century-spanning myth of a Nigerian princess. The HBF’s partner Projeto Paradiso further strengthens the support offered to both of these Brazilian projects.
For more information on this year’s Hubert Bals Fund recipients, visit https://iffr.com/en/blog/hbf-spring-2022
