Netherlands Film Fund’s Bero Beyer and Swedish Film Institute’s Anna Serner
Photo: Erik Dalström
The Netherlands Film Fund and the Swedish Film Institute are drivers on a new international fund, called New Dawn, that will “open up the international film industry.”
The new fund aims to provide production funding and networking opportunities for film projects with a director, producer and/or screenwriter from one of the groups that the United Nations Human Rights Act identifies as a “discriminated group”.
The fund will support feature-length documentaries and fiction films. Project groups that have received funding will also be offered access to a network plus activities throughout the year.
The fund will be administered by the Netherlands Film Fund, and applications will be open from Spring 2022.
After just two months, several film institutes from around the world have shown interest, and eight funds are now together finalizing the criteria for the new fund.
These are the Netherlands, Sweden, Slovenia, Denmark, Finland, French and Flemish Belgium, and Luxembourg. More countries are expected to be announced this autumn, when the fund will be launched on the market at an international festival, says a press release dated 12 July.
“There is a vast number of new perspectives and narrative voices which we need to bring out into the light,” says Anna Serner, CEO of the Swedish Film Institute. “The film industry is still a closed shop founded on old networks. More filmmakers need to be let in if the film industry is to be as vibrant, exciting and important as it can be. The film industry has become more aware of how closed its world is since #metoo and Black Lives Matter. There has been broad consensus to date that we must start finding these new voices. There are large audience groups who do not currently choose film, so we must broaden the repertoire. Because fundamentally, everyone loves film.”
“I am convinced that if we truly want a vibrant, open and inclusive film industry that embraces multiple perspectives of filmmaking, we need to tackle the inherent obstacles not just nationally but also on an international level”, says Bero Beyer, CEO of the Netherlands Film Fund. “So I contacted Anna Serner and the Swedish Film Institute, whom I believe to be trailblazers in going from talking to acting on matters of equality and inclusion, to discuss that international angle. Together we reached out to many other public funders and it was both thrilling and inspiring to see such strong support from so many countries, that acknowledge the need and urgency of the New Dawn initiative, and are willing to back it up in spirit and with money.”
Further details to follow at one of the major film festivals during the autumn.
