CineMart reveals lineup of timely, creative storytelling for 2025 edition
We’ve unveiled our curated selection of 20 film projects and four immersive projects for the 42nd edition of CineMart – IFFR Pro’s co-production market where a lineup of projects in development are presented to international industry for financing and co-production, running Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 February 2025. We’ve also confirmed the lineup for our work-in-progress strand Darkroom, which for 2025 has doubled in size to present twelve projects, two of which are immersive media.
From stories of war and anti-colonial struggle, to bold queer voices and strong female characters; and from the origins of authoritarian regimes to their dystopian futures, folk horror to stop motion animation, romantic musical comedy and Afro-noir mystery – this selection is remarkable in its range of storytelling.
As it approaches its 25th anniversary, ten Rotterdam Lab graduates feature across the CineMart project teams, whilst four of the selected projects in the CineMart selection are supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.
Browse the full list of CineMart projects below, and click here to see the twelve projects in the Darkroom lineup.
About the CineMart selection
In Something Strange Happened to Me, a mother turns to the alternative therapeutic methods of her neighbours to come to terms with the trauma of losing her son defending their village from Russian invasion. It’s the second feature by Ukrainian auteur Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, whose Hubert Bals Fund-supported debut Pamfir (IFFR 2023) premiered in Quinzaine des cinéastes at Cannes.
IFFR regular Daniel Mann, whose Under a Blue Sun screened in the Tiger Competition in 2024, presents another inquiry into the geographies of Israel, Palestine as well as European colonialism in Africa with The Uganda Project, investigating a secret 1904 British Empire expedition to the highlands of Uganda to assess it as a potential national home for the Jewish people.
Two projects in the lineup feature female African directors. South African Rotterdam Lab graduates Babalwa Baartman and Jenna Cato Bass (co-writer of Rafiki, IFFR 2018; director of Flatland, Berlinale Panorama 2019) present the Afro-noir mystery Eziko, as a young academic journeys into the rural Eastern Cape in search of her long-lost sister.
Kenyan filmmaker Angela Wanjiku Wamai’s (Shimoni, IFFR 2023) epic neo-Western Enkop sets the story of fifty-five-year-old Lorna Marwa’s fight to reclaim her life on the dusty expanses of Kenya’s volatile ranch land. The project was awarded by the Hubert Bals Fund in the October support round.
From Kenya to Panama, Ana Elena Tejera’s (Panquiaco, IFFR 2020) HBF-backed Corte Culebra tells another anti-colonial story of displacement in the Panama Canal Zone, co-produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, imagining a reconnection with the ancestral lands and communities after its return from American occupation.
The area was home to the notorious School of the Americas, a US military training facility used to train Latin American soldiers as military regimes rose across the continent. Jazmín López (Si yo fuera el invierno mismo, IFFR Tiger Competition 2020) investigates Argentina’s decent into military rule in Faust, combining psychological thriller, espionage, and intimate drama inspired by Isabel Perón’s biography, president of Argentina before the dictatorship that seized power in 1976. The project is co-produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Sophie Ahrens.
From the origins of authoritarian regimes to their dystopian futures, fellow Brazilian and IFFR regular Marcelo Gomes (Portrait of a Certain Orient, IFFR 2024) presents together with filmmaker and visual artist Cao Guimarães Cape of Pleasures, set in a near-future where the elderly are forced into residences where they extract memories from the brains to provide new learning experiences to an AI system.
Queer legend and filmmaker Cheryl Dunye, whose celebrated debut The Watermelon Woman screened at the festival in 1997, returns to IFFR to also present an AI-infused near-future dystopia, as two trans lovers plot revenge against a DNA-harvesting corporation. It follows several years of award winning series work on the likes of The Umbrella Academy, Queen Sugar and Bridgerton.
Meat is Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair’s (Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You, SXSW 2022) take on the colonial brutality of Ireland’s Great Famine – a post-feminist cannibal folk horror where Eibh finds her calling leading women into bloody folkloric revolt, produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Deirdre Levins.
Lam Li Shuen and Mark Chua, the Singaporean duo behind the celluloid shorts Chomp It! (IFFR 2023) and The Inescapable Desire of Roots (IFFR 2024) also offer a glorious mythological body horror with present day resonance in Strange Root, on the 11th century Signaporean yam-born demigod Akshat’s descent into jealousy and madness.
Strong female characters feature prominently throughout the selection. Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini (The Seen and Unseen, TIFF 2018) brings the HBF-backed Four Seasons in Java, on a woman’s journey in finding peace after being unjustly convicted of murdering a young man in self defence. Ashim Ahluwalia (Miss Lovely, IFFR 2013) offers a disturbing glimpse into the dark side of Indian cinema and the broken lives it left behind with Unidentified Actress, on an ex-child star turned sex-worker.
Czech-Vietnamese filmmaker Diana Cam Van Nguyen (Apart, IFFR 2019) presents the tender romantic drama Inbetween Worlds (Cannes Résidence du Festival 2024), combining collage animation and live action in a story that follows Mai, a photography student in Prague grappling between her Czech upbringing and her Vietnamese roots.
Filipino filmmaker Carl Joseph E. Papa’s absorbing, animated psychological drama The Missing screened at IFFR 2024 and was the Philippines’s 2024 Oscars submission. He follows it with Sentinel, another rotoscope animated drama set in a high school consumed by dark secrets, produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Geo Lomuntad.
Erik Ricco also uses animation in The March of the Sunflowers, a stop-motion fairytale that tells the story of Marialice, a twelve-year-old girl who embarks on a journey through the interior of Minas Gerais in Brazil, a place where the sun has stopped rising.
Dunye’s project is one of a number of queer stories and voices across the selection. Zaida Carmona (La amiga de mi amiga, IFFR 2023) also returns to the festival with Adiós, amor, a music-infused romantic comedy following a lesbian couple, one of whom is a neurotic self-centred filmmaker who tries unsuccessfully to make her second film. The project is produced by Rotterdam Lab graduates Gema Arquero and Marta Cruañas.
Eugen Jebeleanu’s third feature The Price of Gold, produced by Ada Solomon of microFILM, is a coming of age, autobiographical drama, set in 90s post-Communist Romania, about a young boy who becomes a ballroom dancing star.
From the Netherlands comes Yim Brakel’s deeply personal exploration of adoption and loss in Marseille, as the young Kyu, adopted from South Korea, takes a trip with his Dutch father to Marseille during the 1998 World Cup to watch the Netherlands play South Korea. The project is produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Rogier Kramer.
Turkish-Dutch filmmaker Nazlı Elif Durlu (Zuhal, Tallinn Black Nights 2020) presents a charming coming-of-age road movie, following the young girl Esra who travels across the country with a gang of fraudsters, produced by Anna Maria Aslanoglu (Phases of Matter, IFFR 2020; The Gulf, IFFR 2018).
Una Gunjak (Excursion, Locarno 2023) also hits the road in the HBF-backed How Melissa Blew a Fuse, as Melissa steals €200k from her workplace in Germany and heads towards her home town in Bosnia.
CineMart Immersive
Four projects are presented in the immersive selection at CineMart. From profound soundscapes exploring our relationship with war and violence, to fluid distortions of time and shimmering immersions into the world of glitter, the immersive projects across the lineups represent the boldest new forms of storytelling.
Darkroom
IFFR Pro’s Darkroom offers a platform to present to the international industry recently or nearly completed films and immersive media projects seeking completion or gap funding, sales agents and festivals.
IFFR Pro Days 2025
IFFR presents a full and revitalised Pro Days programme at IFFR 2025, returning to their familiar place in the festival heart in ‘de Doelen’ between 31 January – 5 February 2025 with a programme of panel discussions on urgent issues facing the industry, specialised events and daily networking receptions.
Alongside CineMart and Darkroom, the Pro Days will feature the talent development initiatives Rotterdam Lab, which marks its 25th anniversary in 2025, alongside Creative Producer Indaba and an industry day dedicated to the Dutch film ecosystem.
The IFFR Pro Awards, will recognise projects from the CineMart and Darkroom selections and will be presented on the evening of Wednesday 5 February 2025, including the Eurimages New Lab Awards, consisting of an Innovation Award for projects in development and an Outreach Award for work-in-progress projects.
IFFR Pro and the Hubert Bals Fund acknowledge the support of Creative Europe MEDIA and the Netherlands Film Fund, as well as our many national and industry partners.
CineMart 2025 feature selections
100 Thousand Turkish Liras, Nazlı Elif Durlu, Turkey, Germany
Produced by: istos film, Achtung Panda!
Adiós, amor, Zaida Carmona, Spain
Produced by: DEBUT Films, CANADA
Black Is Blue, Cheryl Dunye, United States, Germany, Greece
Produced by: BLACK IS BLUE LLC, Jingletown Films, Jürgen Brüning Filmproduktion, Sima Films, Pinch Me Films, Chrysallis Productions
Cape of Pleasures, Marcelo Gomes, Cao Guimarães, Brazil, Uruguay
Produced by: Cinco em Ponto, Misti Filmes, Criatura Cine
Corte Culebra, Ana Elena Tejera, France, Panama
Produced by: Mestizo Cinema, Fulgurance
Enkop (The Soil), Angela Wanjiku Wamai, Kenya, Netherlands
Produced by: LBx Africa, PRPL
Eziko, Babalwa Baartman, Jenna Cato Bass, South Africa
Produced by: Sanusi Films, Miss K Productions
Faust, Jazmín López, Germany, Argentina
Produced by: Schuldenberg Films
Four Seasons in Java, Kamila Andini, Indonesia, Singapore
Produced by: Forka Films, Giraffe Pictures
How Melissa Blew a Fuse, Una Gunjak, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia
Produced by: SSCA / pro.ba, Nukleus Film, Bas Celik Film House
Inbetween Worlds, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Czech Republic, Slovakia
Produced by: 13ka, nutprodukcia
Marseille, Yim Brakel, Netherlands
Produced by: Labyrint Film
Meat, Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, Ireland
Produced by: Fantastic Films
Sentinel, Carl Joseph E. Papa, Philippines
Produced by: Project 8 Projects
Something Strange Happened to Me, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, Ukraine
Produced by: Mellivora Production
The March of the Sunflowers, Erik Ricco, Brazil
Produced by: Cup Filmes, Coala Filmes, Tubz Studio
The Price of Gold, Eugen Jebeleanu, Romania
Produced by: microFILM
The Uganda Project, Daniel Mann, France, UK
Produced by: Acqua Alta, La Bete, Laila UK
Strange Root, Lam Li Shuen, Mark Chua, Singapore, Indonesia
Produced by: 13 Little Pictures, Emoumie Pictures, Palari Films
Unidentified Actress, Ashim Ahluwalia, India, Germany
Produced by: Future East Film, Rapid Eye Movies
CineMart Immersive selection 2025
The Dreams of Time, Jeissy Trompiz, Venezuela, Spain
Produced by: Alamar Films, Migranta Films
Hyperdam, Floris van Laethem, Netherlands
Produced by: Dutch Digital Collectibles
One Charming Night, Robin Coops, Netherlands
Produced by: Studio Biarritz, Coops & Co
Strata, Lilian Hess, Luxembourg
Produced by: a_BAHN
