Hubert Bals Fund Grants 20 Projects, Including New Pepe

The Hubert Bals Fund, the prestigious Dutch initiative dedicated to supporting adventurous filmmaking from around the globe, has announced its latest round of development grants, channeling support to 20 new projects. The selection includes a highly anticipated follow-up from the director of Pepe, the acclaimed 2024 drama that earned widespread festival recognition and critical praise for its bold, unconventional storytelling.

The new slate, confirmed by the fund’s organizers, underscores the program’s continuing commitment to nurturing distinctive voices from regions where cinematic infrastructure remains fragile or underfunded. As in previous years, the grants are designed to help filmmakers at the crucial early stages - script development, research, and project packaging - ensuring that ambitious ideas can move from concept to production without being stifled by financial constraints.

Leading the roster is the unnamed new project from Pepe director Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias. The Dominican filmmaker’s previous work, which blended documentary techniques with dreamlike narrative flourishes to explore the life of a hippopotamus once owned by Pablo Escobar, became a talking point on the festival circuit, winning the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. While details of his new film remain under wraps, the selection signals a strong vote of confidence in an auteur known for defying easy categorization.

The announcement arrives at a time when the international art-house ecosystem is navigating post-pandemic shifts in distribution and funding. For many emerging directors, the Hubert Bals Fund serves as a critical lifeline, offering not just financial assistance but also access to a network of co-production markets and industry connections through its parent organization, the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The fund has a storied history of backing early works from directors who later achieved global prominence, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lav Diaz, and Kelly Reichardt.

A Broad, Global Slate

While the Pepe director’s project will inevitably draw the most immediate attention, the other 19 recipients represent a geographically and aesthetically diverse cross-section of contemporary cinema. The selected projects hail from across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, with a notable emphasis on first- and second-time feature directors. Several projects are led by women filmmakers, reflecting an ongoing industry push to address gender imbalance in film funding.

The range of subjects is equally varied, touching on everything from colonial legacies and environmental collapse to personal tales of migration and identity. One project reportedly explores the lingering trauma of a civil war through the eyes of a child narrator; another takes a genre-bending approach to a family drama set against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing megacity. While synopses remain brief, the selection committee’s statement emphasized "formal daring and a clear, personal vision" as key criteria for this round.

The grants themselves are designated for the development phase, a period that is often the most precarious for filmmakers without established commercial backing. Recipients can use the funds to finance script rewrites, conduct location scouting, or engage in archival research - essential work that rarely attracts traditional investors. In recent years, the Hubert Bals Fund has also increasingly prioritized projects that incorporate innovative production models, including hybrid forms that blur the line between fiction and nonfiction.

A Track Record of Discovery

Founded in 1988, the Hubert Bals Fund has long been regarded as one of the most influential finishing and development programs in independent cinema. Its early-stage support has been instrumental in bringing to light works that might otherwise have remained unrealized. The fund’s director, speaking at the announcement, noted that the sheer volume of applications - far exceeding the number of available grants - reflects both the vitality of global independent cinema and the persistent scarcity of resources for non-commercial work.

"These 20 projects represent a fraction of the extraordinary talent we saw this year," the director said. "Our goal is to give filmmakers the time and space to deepen their craft, and to ensure that the stories they want to tell can be told on their own terms."

For the Pepe director, the grant will likely ease the pressure of following up a breakout success. That film, which premiered in competition at Berlin, was itself a whirlwind of narrative experimentation, using voice-over from a spectral, fictionalized animal to interrogate the brutal history of the drug trade and its human cost. The new project is rumored to continue in a similarly ambitious vein, though the filmmaker has offered no public comments.

The announcement also comes as the International Film Festival Rotterdam prepares for its next edition, where the fund’s grantees typically gain valuable exposure. Many past recipients have premiered their completed works in Rotterdam’s main competition, a platform that can lead to further international sales and festival placements. For the 20 filmmakers selected this round, the road from development grant to premiere is long, but the first step has now been secured.

As the independent film sector faces persistent headwinds - from shifting audience habits to tightened streaming budgets - the Hubert Bals Fund’s unwavering support stands as a reminder that risk-taking cinema still holds a place in the global landscape. The 20 chosen projects will now move forward, each carrying the hope not only of completion but of finding an audience willing to embrace the unexpected.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter