Cannes round-up: IFFR films shine as panel spotlights Displacement Film Fund

From the Hubert Bals Fund-backed A Useful Ghost winning the Grand Prix in Semaine de la Critique, to excellent critical reception for three CineMart titles in the official selection, IFFR looks back on a lively Cannes edition with IFFR’s Festival Director, Vanja Kaludjercic on the jury for Un Certain Regard and an impressive showing of alumni and supported projects shining throughout. During a panel led by IFFR’s Clare Stewart, the spotlight turned to the Displacement Film Fund, where Cate Blanchett, MoMA’s Rajendra Roy and grant recipients Maryna Er Gorbach and Mo Harawe discussed the pressing mission to support displaced artists. 

A Useful Ghost wins the Grand Prix in Semaine de la Critique

Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke claimed the top prize in the Cannes Semaine de la Critique sidebar with his HBF-backed feature debut A Useful Ghost – a delightful mix of supernatural ghost story, queer sex comedy and political and environmental satire that “isn’t quite like anything you’ve seen before”, according to Variety‘s Catherine Bray.

Backed by HBF+Europe (an initiative supported by Creative Europe), the film – which stars a possessed vacuum cleaner – received €60,000 in production support from the Hubert Bals Fund. Kevin Jagernauth for The Film Verdict wrote: “Boonbunchachoke’s bold and beautiful debut marks a filmmaker to watch.”

Festival Director, Vanja Kaludjercic on Un Certain Regard Jury

IFFR’s Festival Director Vanja Kaludjercic sat on the jury for the Un Certain Regard section, dedicated to emerging talent and bold filmmaking, presided over by British director Molly Manning Walker (How to Have Sex, IFFR 2024), alongside fellow jury members French-Swiss filmmaker Louise Courvoisier, Italian director Roberto Minervini and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart. 

“I appreciate cinema that illuminates me in one way or another”, she explained in an interview with Cannes during the festival, “and that’s why you can’t get bored because it’s an eternal source of inspiration.” 

The jury awarded Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo with the top prize, as the jury prize went to Simon Mesa Soto’s A Poet, and best director prize to Palestinian filmmakers Tarzan and Arab Nasser for Once Upon A Time in Gaza.

Displacement Film Fund panel

“Growing human displacement is one of the greatest crises and challenges facing us as a species”, said Cate Blanchett at a panel dedicated to the Displacement Film Fund on Friday as part of the Cannes programme. Supporting displaced artists and “breaking down the stigmatisation of those stories” are driving motivations for establishing the Fund, she explained.

Hosted by IFFR’s Managing Director Clare Stewart, Blanchett was joined by grant recipients Maryna Er Gorbach and Mo Harawe, and Rajendra Roy – Chief Curator of Film at MoMA and Co-Chair of The Academy’s International Film Award Executive Committee. Gorbach described the DFF as “a call from the heart” and explained that her funded project is “a film about the displacement of normality.” Harawe added, “For me, filmmaking is a form of self-expression and making films in Somalia is also about building the foundation for a future film industry.”

Roy spoke about a recent rule change at the Academy Awards which makes the International Feature Film category accessible for refugees and asylum seekers, commenting that the DFF initiative was a call for the film industry to link arms, “raising awareness about this situation.”

Three CineMart titles impress across the official selections

Three standout projects first presented at IFFR’s CineMart co-production market emerged as highlights across the selections. 

The “pensive and rather lovely” Romería by Carla Simón (CineMart 2021) warmed critics with its heartfelt, personal take on the 18-year-old orphan Marina, who travels to meet her grandparents on Spain’s Galician coast. Set in 2004 and touching on AIDS, parents and family secrets, Wendy Ide for Screen writes that “Simón has a rare gift for capturing the unpredictable, mercurial beast that is the family.” 

“The director zooms into crooked wooden alabasters and delicately swinging wind chimes, grasping at texture and sound with the voracity of those who understand the stakes of faded memories”, wrote Rafa Sales Ross for Little White Lies.

In Un Certain Regard, the “rambunctious spaghetti Western” (Screen) Testa o croce? by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis (CineMart 2023) was praised for its genre-bending prowess and vivid sun-kissed cinematography. Camillo De Marco in Cineuropa describes the film, which picked up the Eurimages Co-development Award at CineMart, as “overflowing with passion for film as a timeless medium to be manipulated.” Mark Asch for Little White Lies continues: “there are wonders here in the vein of the dirty-fingernailed magic realism that is contemporary Italian cinema’s most rewarding mode.” Asch gives particular praise to John C. Reilly’s “massively charismatic performance” as Buffalo Bill.

Screening in Cannes Premiere, Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada’s latest feature, Love on Trial (CineMart 2022), tells the story of Mai, a rising J-Pop idol whose burgeoning career is jeopardized when she violates the “no love” clause in her contract by entering a romantic relationship. 

As Blake Simons of The Film Stage observes, the film “gracefully unpacks idol and agency,” offering no explosive confrontations but rather revealing “the slow suffocation of an industry that constrains these characters” and the “glimmering catharsis of the personal love that seeks to set them free.”

Promised Sky by Erige Sehiri opens Un Certain Regard 

French-Tunisian filmmaker Erige Sehiri’s “bittersweet celebration of endurance and sacrifice” (Alan Hunter in Screen) Promised Sky opened the Un Certain Regard section. Working on the margins of fiction and documentary, the film is a story of sub-Saharan migration to Tunisia, following the fate of three women, a pastor, a student, and an exiled mother, who together shelter Kenza, a shipwreck survivor. The project was supported with €60,000 of production funding through the HBF+Europe scheme.

Cineuropa described it as “wonderfully paced and endowed with an incredibly fluid sense of movement and varied décor”, and “an incredibly human film, placing focus on an endearing trio of women from sub-Saharan Africa living in Tunis and developing a growing awareness of the world.” 

The film capped off a spread of IFFR-backed talent in Cannes, including immersive media project Lacuna by Dutch makers Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga Broeren, produced by IFFR-regular Corine Meijers (Studio Biarritz) and Ilja Kok, which had its international premiere in the Cannes Immersive Competition, following its world premiere at IFFR 2025.

Hubert Bals Fund launches HBF+Brazil scheme, and joins Indonesia co-production panel 

The Hubert Bals Fund joined partners Spcine, RioFilme Prefeitura do Rio and Projeto Paradiso at the Marché du Film to sign the cooperation agreement for HBF+Brazil: Co-development Support, an initiative dedicated to supporting the early development of projects by second and third time filmmakers from São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and the rest of Brazil.

The agreement was officially signed by Clare Stewart and Tamara Tatishvili of the Hubert Bals Fund and IFFR; Leonardo Edde, President of RioFilme; Josephine Bourgois, Executive Director of Projeto Paradiso; and Lyara Oliveira, President of Spcine, and was attended by Joelma Oliveira Gonzaga, Audiovisual Secretary of the Brazilian Ministério da Cultura.

It came as Brazilian HBF-alumni Kleber Mendonça Filho won best director at Cannes for The Secret Agent, a Netherlands co-production with IFFR-regular Erik Glijnijs of Lemming Film.

Following a presentation in La Fabrique, the Hubert Bals Fund joined the panel “Co-production & Distribution Opportunities in Indonesia”, where, alongside Denis Vaslin (Volya Films), they shared insights on international collaboration through the case study of This City Is a Battlefield (IFFR 2025 closing film). The HBF participated in the Indonesian Night, hosted by the Indonensian Ministry of Culture, where they also met with Culture Minister, Fadli Zon. 

The HBF+Europe programmes are supported by

Displacement Film Fund partners