Hubert Bals Fund Sets Dev’t Support Grants for 20 Projects, Including New Film From ‘Pepe’ Director

'The Memory of Hair' Courtesy of IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund (HBF) has unveiled its selection of 20 projects to receive a grant of €10,000 ($11,515) each under its flagship Development Support Scheme 2026. The figure marks an increase of a third over the 15 projects supported in 2025.

Out of the 2026 projects, eight have been selected following a regional focus on Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia. They include the first project that the HBF has supported from North Macedonia, namely Short Tiger award winner Anka Gujabidze’s debut feature, Bakhmaro – Invisible Formula. They also include two projects each from Ukraine and Serbia “amid their political crisis,” the HBF noted. “In times where development funding is increasingly under threat, it’s remarkable that we’ve been able to increase our grant allocation,” said Tamara Tatishvili, head of the Hubert Bals Fund. “This includes a welcome regional focus on Southeast Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia, ensuring our support reaches areas typically underrepresented in funding decisions.”

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She also emphasized: “The selection carries a strong IFFR alumni presence and reflects an incredible breadth of contemporary filmmaking – distinctive voices expressing their artistic freedom, whatever the context. None of this would be possible without our partners, new and old, who help us to offer this early support to the world’s most promising filmmaking talent.” Among the IFFR alumni in the selection beyond Gujabidze are Dean Wei with The Apple Doesn’t Fall, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy with Deus Ex Machina, Mina Đukić with Murmur, Philip Sotnychenko with Carousel, Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi with Lady Pearl, as well as Tomás Espaillat and Nika Zhukova with Donde Duermen Las Abejas. Other grant recipients include Pepe director Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias and the director of Mongolia’s 2024 international Oscar submission, City of Wind, Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir.

A number of projects deal with themes of displacement, migration and belonging, while examinations of aging and later life stages are also among the films receiving grants. “There is a strong African presence in the selection, including Babatunde Apalowo’s In the Wake of Yesterday, which follows a woman exiled from a Sahelian settlement after refusing to falsify her own record, and Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi’s Lady Pearl, a thrilling absurdist satire set in a shape-shifting hotel, grappling with the long-term consequences of Apartheid and the contradictions of modern South Africa,” the HBF also highlighted. Check out the 2026 HBF development support grant recipients below. THE APPLE DOESN’T FALL… Director: Dean Wei China 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 Director: Dina Duma North Macedonia A tragicomic portrait of aging 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 Director: Virginia Urreiztieta Mexico 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 Director: Anka Gujabidze Georgia 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 Director: Philip Sotnychenko Ukraine, Netherlands 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 Director: Sheethal Namath Shyam India 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 Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy Ukraine A reconstruction of the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant by Russian forces – a true story of courage and betrayal. FILME DE ARQUIVO Director: Lincoln Péricles Brazil, Sudan, Kenya, France, Portugal 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 Director: Turkan Huseyn Azerbaijan, Turkey 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 Director: Xiwen Cong China, France, Netherlands, Portugal 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 Director: Babatunde Apalowo Nigeria, United Kingdom 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 Director: Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi South Africa 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 Director: Dušan Zorić, Matija Gluščević Serbia, France, Croatia 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 Director: Mina Đukić Serbia 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 Director: Kanishka Sonthalia, Siddesh Shetty India 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 Director: Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias Dominican Republic, Spain 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 Director: Marcel Beltrán Brazil, Cuba 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 Director: Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir Mongolia, France 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 Director: Tomás Espaillat, Nika Zhukova Dominican Republic Two people rescue each other from loneliness just when they need it most. Their bond becomes a home that endures over time. Anonymous project Director: Undisclosed Country: Undisclosed