Four projects selected for New Dawn
The international film production fund New Dawn strives for a vibrant, open and inclusive film industry with true diversity of perspectives, filmic expressions and relevance for everyone.
Intended specifically to amplify underrepresented voices, New Dawn operates as a production fund by making additional funding available for film productions and by supporting film makers in setting up networks.
The following projects have been selected in the latest round:
Birthday (Canada)
Director: Lara Zeidan
Producer: Couronne Nord
Logline: Beirut, 7 May 2008: A regular after-school day for Razan, who turns fourteen tomorrow, is disrupted by gun battles that erupt throughout the city. Regardless, Razan’s teenage concerns remain unchanged as she tries to enjoy a normal birthday.
Committee: "Set during a pivotal time during Lebanon’s recent history where political, ethnic and inter-confessional tensions brought back the spectre of civil war, Lara Zeidan’s autobiographical, gripping coming-of-age narrative offers a fascinating window into the irruption of this political strife into the lives of the city’s youth. Replete with subtle details, the script captures the realizations, blank spots and perceptions of the teenager’s as they navigate this familiar but escalated reality.”
Granted support: € 200,000
Judas Tree (Canada)
Director: Susan Bayani
Producer: Understory
Logline: Sabä, an Iranian Canadian rug restorer, must decide whether to testify against her former interrogator. A choice that forces her to reveal the 13-year-old secret of her rape in prison, and puts her family in grave danger.
Committee: "Judas Tree is a towering example of how powerful transnational cinema can be in its combining of national realities and how individuals navigate displacement, migration, exile. Grounded in the critical cinematic tradition of Iranian New Wave, the directorial originality of this script is its focus on the intergenerational consequences of the regime for those in exile and the diasporas, some of whom have never set foot in Iran."
Granted support: € 200,000
Modou Modou (Belgium)
Director: Brahim Tall
Producer: Auguste Orts
Logline: A documentary that follows three brothers: the Senegalese street vendors Youssou, Bass and Kamal. While their work locations in Spain and Senegal are the setting for the rituals of street vending, their homes are the backdrop for everyday domestic scenes, including conversations about Senegalese society in transition.
Committee: "African beach and street vendors are a well-established feature of the coastline towns and cities of many European and African tourist hot spots, who have on occasion been depicted in film, albeit in sometimes unflattering and indeed flattening ways. With an unprecedented, privileged access to three such vendors, given that they are members of his immediate family, the Belgian-Senegalese filmmaker Brahim Tall renders the lives of these visible-invisible street workers in three-dimensional quality."
Granted support: € 50,000
(M)otherland (Belgium)
Director: Maïté Maeum Jeannolin
Producer: Matière Première
Logline: I am part of the post-adoption generation, carrying fragments of stories, often hidden or unsaid. My mother was adopted from Korea to France. She never returned, nor spoke about it. She's often told me: “this is my story, not yours.” I seriously wondered, what does "her" story mean?
Committee: "Intimate, investigative and committed, this highly researched, resonant and nuanced documentary opens the Pandora’s Box of the international transracial adoption of South Korean babies and toddlers, beginning with an exploration of the intergenerational effects experienced in the families of adoptees and broadening out to encompass the often unseen realities of this seemingly providential practice."
Granted support: € 50,000
Header image: Lara Zeidan, Susan Bayani, Brahim Tall & Maïté Maeum Jeannolin
