Argentine filmmaker Manuel Abramovich has been announced as one of the nine winners of the IDFA Bertha Fund’s IBF Classic grant program—offering development and production support to filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and parts of Eastern Europe since 1998—for the development of his Mexico-set documentary project Cowboy Love, to be produced by Gema Films.
The film will follow a gay cowboy community in Mexico that has reinvented the classical cowboy figure. Like a documentary remake of Brokeback Mountain' with the tone of Mexican telenovela, Cowboy Love is the movie these cowboys always wanted but never had: the one about their own love stories.
Abramovich’s will receive €5,000 from the IDFA Bertha Fund development grant. The Argentine filmmaker recently won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear Jury Prize for his short film Blue Boy. His 2014 short film La Reina was shown at more than 150 festivals worldwide and received 50 awards. Solar (2016), his first feature, premiered at BAFICI and has been screened at different festivals and art venues. Soldado, his second feature film, premiered at the Berlinale in 2017. His latest documentary feature Light Years shot during the production of Lucrecia Martel’s acclaimed film Zama had its world premiere at the 74th Venice Film Festival.
The IBF Classic selection committee included jury members Alex Szalat, former CEO, ARTE France; Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Director, Social Impact Media at Bertha Philanthropies; María Campaña Ramia, Programmer, Ambulante Documentary Film Festival; Program Advisor, IDFA and Encuentros del Otro Cine 'EDOC'; Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director, IDFA; and Isabel Arrate Fernandez, Managing Director, IDFA Bertha Fund.
