NFF+HBF support for Prantik Basu and Shengze Zhu
The Hubert Bals Fund’s joint venture with the Netherlands Film Fund awards production funds to former HBF-supported projects with an attached Dutch co-producer. In the scheme’s first award of 2025, projects by Chinese filmmaker Shengze Zhu and Indian filmmaker Prantik Basu are both awarded €75,000. Both former Tiger Award-winners for feature and short work, Shengze’s latest project investigates marginalised teenagers in China’s countryside, whilst Basu explores forbidden gay romance romance in 90s Calcutta.
Shengze Zhu’s documentary Present.Perfect, which won the IFFR Tiger Award in 2019 and was named one of the Best Movies of 2019 by the Chicago Tribune, explored the internet's impact on Chinese culture, particularly among rural youth. Her latest project, A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon, revisits the lives of marginalised teenagers in China’s countryside, this time focusing on those left behind by parents who have migrated for work in the city.
The film places us on a sweltering summer day where three troubled young teens set out on a reckless plan to escape the confines of their small town. A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon is Shengze’s first narrative project and will be filmed in her home province, Hubei, China. Presented at CineMart in 2024, the project is awarded through its Dutch co-producer BALDR Film B.V.
Indian filmmaker Prantik Basu’s films explore the connections between culture, identity and environment. His Tiger Award-winning short Sakhisona (2017) blended folklore with archaeology while his mid-length Bela (2021) captured the ritualistic art and daily lives of Chhau dancers. In his feature debut, DENGUE, Basu sets a forbidden romance in 1990s Calcutta, blending themes of nature, love, and societal repression.
The film is set during the 90s in the suburbs of Calcutta, a city shaped by colonial legacy and monsoon floods. In a time and place where homosexuality was criminalised, a forbidden romance is unravelled. Under a torrential rain, two young men share an umbrella and become lovers, but symptoms of a violent fever seize one of them. The film is awarded through its Dutch co-producer The Film Kitchen B.V.
Exemplifying the impact of the NFF+HBF scheme is the IFFR closing film for 2025 This City Is a Battlefield, directed by Mouly Surya – a co-production between Indonesia, the Netherlands, Singapore, France, Norway, the Philippines, and Cambodia. It was three times supported by the Hubert Bals Fund – in development, by the Netherlands Film Fund + Hubert Bals Fund Co-production Scheme through its Dutch co-producer Volya Films, and was the final recipient of the NFF+HBF: Dutch Post-production Award. Read more about it here.
Header image: A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon
