Göteborg Film Fund 2022 celebrates supported Ukrainian film Luxembourg, Luxembourg in Venice and Toronto, hands out pitching awards in Khartoum and announces new development grant programme for Ukraine.

In September Göteborg Film Fund is opening the call for submissions for development grants for filmmakers working within Ukraine. The support scheme is part of a bigger programme for Ukraine, with residency filmmakers now working in Sweden, as well as support for dissemination and promotion of Ukrainian films. The project is supported by The Swedish Postcode Foundation, within the frame of their focus on artistic freedom, and by the Swedish Institute and their emergency support for Ukraine.

The Development grants, consisting of SEK 75 000 each, are aimed for development of scripts or projects and supports feature length fiction or documentary films, with a director tied to them. The call is open September 1-September 15.

To apply, see Development grants.

Luxembourg, Luxembourg by Antonio Lukich to Venice and Toronto

Antonio Lukich is one of the four Ukrainian directors visiting Göteborg Film Festival on a residency stay for three months. Now he temporarily leaves the Swedish west coast to visit the film festivals in Venice and Toronto, where his second feature film, the black comedy Luxembourg, Luxembourg will have its world premiere.

In Venice the film competes in the official festival section Orrizonti and in Toronto it will be screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section. In addition to the residency, where Lukich is writing on a new script, Göteborg Film Fund is supporting the promotion activities for the film, within a cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute and their programme proMOTION. The film is produced by Vladimir Yatsenko and Anna Yatsenko for Forefilms. Additional projects supported within the programme are Felix and me, directed by Iryna Tsilyk, premiering during the autumn, and Pamfir, directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, which premiered in Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes festival in May and previously was supported with post-production support from Göteborg Film Fund.

– We are of course very happy to accompany one of our residency guests to Venice and Toronto and celebrate his, and Ukrainian, film at the same time as it is a kick-off for new parts of our programme for Ukraine. With which we have the goal to keep the industry within Ukraine active as much as possible, under these really tough circumstances, says Camilla Larsson, Fund Manager at Göteborg Film Festival.

Göteborg Film Fund awards best project pitch in Khartoum

On August 29 Göteborg Film Fund handed out two awards at the Swedish embassy in Khartoum, in cooperation with the Swedish non-profit organisation The Global Film and Media Initiative.

The awards ceremony followed a pitching work shop and session that GFMI organised during the spring, in close connection to the Shashat Lab. The winners of the Göteborg Film Fund awards for best project pitch were: the feature fiction Lamp in the Dark, written and directed by Altayeb Mahdi and the series Tanzeel, produced by Wahj Mohamed Khair, directed by Amro Mohamed Elami and co-written by Rawia Elhag.

Additionally three Brazilian projects supported by Göteborg Film Fund 2021 are now celebrating successes as finished films:

– Julia Murat’s, Rule 34 won Locarno’s Golden Leopard, as the second Brazilian film ever. Rule 34 is a bold, provocative and beautiful film about law, sexuality and politics and it breaks many ”rules”. The film is produced by Tatiana Leite and Julia Murat, for Esquina filmes, in co-production with Juliette Lepoutre at Bubbles.

– Sergio Carvalho’s Alien Nights, produced by Pedro von Kruger at Saci Filmes, which held its world premiere at Göteborg Film Festival in January was recently awarded at the Festival de Cinema de Gramado in Brazil. Carvalho’s strong and intense debut received no less than five awards: Best film, Best actor, Best actress, best supporting actor and the Critic’s Award.

– Lorran Dias experimental novella length film Between the Colony and the Stars, produced by Joao Gilberto Lopes for TV Coragem, will soon have its world premiere in the short film competition at a major Brazilian festival.