IDFA Bertha Fund announces new IBF Europe selection

Having introduced a new structure for IBF Europe in 2022, the Fund sets out to encourage European producers to participate as minority-producers in high-quality documentary projects by filmmakers from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania. Since the start of IBF Europe, the overall goal has been not only to give more agency, decision-making power, equality, and financial gain to producers coming from the IBF countries, but also to encourage fair co-production practices around the world. The minority co-production scheme aims to create new foundations for effective, equitable co-production practices.

Croma (Argentina, Austria, Germany)
dir. Manuel Abramovich / prod. Ruido / co-prod. Nabis Film Group
In a green-screen studio, a group of people meets to imagine the future. The chroma becomes here a way of thinking. A project about gender as a fiction that we have learned. A film where no one has to justify their existence, where we can reinvent our lives’ scripts.

Cuba & Alaska (Ukraine, France)
dir. Yegor Troyanovsky / prod. 2Brave Productions / co-prod. Tag Film
Two young female paramedics, Cuba and Alaska, live on the edge in the war-torn Kharkiv region – their mission is to save lives while sharing their dreams, good humour, and belief in victory.

Matryoshka (Costa Rica, Romania)
dir. Maricarmen Merino / prod. Espiral Producciones / co-prod. Defilm
Matryoshka is a mother and daughter dialogue about the journey of transformation one must take in the quest of finding your own voice, so that we can understand the choices of the women that raised us and preceded us.

A Picture to Remember (Ukraine, Germany, France)
dir. Olga Chernykh / prod. Real Pictures / co-prod Tama Film Produktion, Lufilms
A Picture to Remember is an essayistic account of a family's long journey through exile and wars. Three generations of Ukrainian women—those of the director, her mother, and her grandmother search for a way to come to term with terrible and recurring losses.

A Steppe Blues (China, France)
dir. Bo Yang / prod. Hainan Mind Image Film Productions
Inner Mongolia, China, today. A young cattle farmer with unrealistic dreams of greatness drags his mother, his younger sister, and his wife into a spiral of financial difficulties that will test their family unity. They will have to sacrifice themselves to help the only man in the household grow up.

Welded Together (Belarus, France, Belgium, The Netherlands)
dir. Anastasiya Miroshnichenko / prod. An|Da Films / co-prod Little Big Stories, Stenola Productions, Wit Film
Katya is a young woman and a professional welder. Abandoned as a little girl, she embarks on a personal journey to reunite with her lost family, to weld it together as she would weld metal at work. Yet what she discovers down that road is about to make her relive her early childhood trauma.

Anonymous project

Selection committee

• Bianca Oana (Producer at Monogram Film)
• Darya Bassel (Producer at Moon Man)
• Eliane Ferreira (Producer at Muiraquitã Filmes)
• Fabien Greenberg (Producer at Antipode Films)
• Isabel Arrate Fernandez (Deputy Director, IDFA & Executive Director, IDFA Bertha Fund)

Upcoming deadline and eligible projects

The next deadline for IBF Europe – Minority Co-production scheme is earlier than usual: January 15, 2024.

Please note a change in eligible projects: The upcoming IBF Europe – Minority Co-production selection round will only consider projects that are in mid-production to post-production stage and that can be realized by March 2025. More details to follow on the IBF Europe – Minority Co-production regulations page.

IBF Europe is supported by the Creative Europe – MEDIA programme of the European Union.