Darkroom selects twelve projects for 2025
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. After two successful editions, Darkroom is expanding to present for the first time twelve projects during CineMart – ten feature fiction and two immersive projects – all supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, formerly presented at CineMart or with a Rotterdam Lab alumni attached.
Darkroom takes place during the 42nd CineMart, which runs Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 February 2025. Browse the full list of projects below, and click here to see the 24 projects in the CineMart lineup.
About the Darkroom selection
For the first time, Darkroom features a dedicated focus, which for 2025 will be on Georgian filmmakers, to provide them a platform of support and visibility. Set amid violent demonstrations in Tbilisi, Uta Beria’s Hubert Bals Fund-supported Tear Gas is a love story where Elene and Andro find each other among thousands of protesters. The project features the filmmaker’s personal images of demonstrations in Georgia in 2019.
Dry Leaf by Alexandre Koberidze (What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, Berlinale 2021 FIPRESCI prize) is a nostalgic trip across the football fields and villages of Georgia in search of the missing Lisa. Rati Oneli (City of the Sun, Berlinale 2017; co-writer Beginning by Dea Kulumbegashvili, IFFR 2021) presents Wild Dogs Don’t Bite, a noir-inspired revenge thriller, that was supported by the HBF+Europe: Post-production Support scheme in October.
Indian filmmaker Bikas Ranjan Mishra (Dance of Ganesha, IFFR 2012) brings the anticipated Hubert Bals Fund-supported and CineMart 2013 presented Bayaan, a police procedural drama that explores the rise of religious nationalism in mainstream politics in India, starring Huma Qureshi as a rookie female detective.
A timeless rural village in Bengal is subject to the surveillance of a totalitarian regime in Kaktarua by filmmaking duo Yudhajit Basu (Kalsubai, Oberhausen 2021; Nehemich, Cannes La Cinef 2023) and Prithvijoy Ganguly. They bring the story of Radha, who goes to her ancestral village of Pakhi to find the wedding ring that her father had gifted her mother before he strangely disappeared.
Ivana Mladenovic (Soldiers. Story From Ferentari, IFFR 2018; Ivana the Terrible, Locarno Special Jury Prize 2019) brings her latest Sorella di Clausura, a bittersweet comedy and romantic melodrama on a woman’s obsession with a famous Balkan musician, set in Eastern Europe amid the 2008 financial crisis. In Julia Thelin’s (Push It, Cannes 2017; Sorry Not Sorry, Clermont-Ferrand 2020) The Art Patron, Anna works as a cleaner, but pretends to be a successful art patron in order to lure two young art students to her employer’s empty house.
Thomas Woodroffe (Austral Fever, TIFF, Venice 2019) evokes the ghosts of cinema’s past in Bloques Erráticos, as Lucien Castlenau, director of a 1925 film on Patagonia, awakes in the Tierra de Fuego to find a new technocratic society and the vestiges of an indigenous past. Rotterdam Lab graduate Rodrigo Díaz produces.
Ghosts appear in Gabriel Azorín’s debut Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, produced by Rotterdam Lab graduate Carlos Pardo Ros, as a group of boys bathe in the hot springs of ancient Roman baths and encounter the Roman soldiers who built them 2000 years previous.
The Ivy is an exploration of the relationship between a teenage orphan and woman searching for her abandoned son, touching on wounds, Oedipus syndrome, laughter and tenderness, by Ecuadorian filmmaker Ana Cristina Barragan (Alba, IFFR 2016; La piel pulpo, 2022).
About the Darkroom immersive selection
Two Dutch immersive projects are presented in the lineup. A marching rhythm performed by water drops, cracking glass, hammers, bells and gongs infuses The March by photographer Leo Erken and composer Frieda Gustavs, who bring a VR experience that deals with our relations and responsibilities to war, violence and inequality. The last of six scenes is still to be created, and will be made in cooperation with the artistic children of the Azi Nizi Maza Studio in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
Daniel Ernst was awarded the Gouden Kalf for Best Interactive at the Netherlands Film Festival for his VR diorama Diorama No.4: Die Fernweh Oper (IFFR 2019). His latest work The Great Orator presents an AI-driven orator that crafts ever-changing articulations based on current events and visitor interactions, challenging you to question what is real and what is not.
Click here to read about all the CineMart immersive projects
CineMart 2025
We’ve unveiled our curated selection of 20 urgent and expressive film projects and four immersive projects for the 42nd edition of CineMart.
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.
IFFR Pro and the Hubert Bals Fund acknowledge the support of Creative Europe MEDIA and NL Film Fonds, as well as our many national and industry partners.
Darkroom complete selection 2025
The Art Patron, Julia Thelin, Sweden, Denmark
Produced by: Grand Slam Film, Hyena Film
Bayaan, Bikas Ranjan Mishra, India
Produced by: Platoon One Films, Summit Studios
Bloques Erráticos, Thomas Woodroffe, Chile, France, Argentina
Produced by: Fiebre SpA, La Belle Affaire Productions, Un Puma
Dry Leaf, Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia
Produced by: New Matter Films
The Great Orator, Daniel Ernst, Netherlands (immersive)
Produced by: K.O Productions
La hiedra, Ana Cristina Barragán, Ecuador, Mexico, France, Spain
Produced by: Boton Films, BHD Films, Ciné-Sud Promotion, Guspira Films
Kaktarua, Yudhajit Basu, Prithvijoy Ganguly, India, Taiwan
Produced by: The Victoria Foundation, U Turn Pictures, Betula Films
Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, Gabriel Azorín, Spain, Portugal
Produced by: DVEIN Films, Filmika Galaika, Bando à Parte
The March, Leo Erken, Frieda Gustavs, Netherlands, Ukraine (immersive)
Produced by: nl12
Sorella di Clausura, Ivana Mladenovic, Romania, Serbia, Italy, Spain
Produced by: microFILM, Dunav 84, Nightswim, Boogaloo Films
Tear Gas, Uta Beria, Georgia, France, Germany
Produced by: 1991 Productions, Tripode Productions, 70 Steps
Wild Dogs Don’t Bite, Rati Oneli, Georgia, Luxembourg
Produced by: Office of Film Architecture, Independent Film Project, Les Films Fauves
