Italy’s Fondazione Prada, on Monday at the Venice Film Festival, officially launched its film fund to sustain independent cinema from around the world without any restrictions on theme, genre, or language.
As previously announced, the fund is starting out with a €1.5 million ($1.6 million) pot and will support 10-12 selected feature films per year, including docs and animation.
The idea is “to assemble a very diverse selection and give priority to projects that push boundaries,” said Paolo Moretti, the former Cannes Directors’ Fortnight chief who is managing the fund in collaboration with film programmer Rebecca De Pas.
The Fondazione Prada Film Fund – the call for which is open Sept. 1- Oct. 17 – offers three types of support: development, production and post. The maximum amount of funding a project can get is €250,000 ($292,000) towards production.
“It’s not a lot of money, but still it’s a start. It’s the beginning of something,” said Moretti. “We are entering uncharted territory, opening up to so many countries and types of films. I think we will learn from this first experience and see what happens,” he added.
“We hope to trigger new financial dynamics around the film,” Moretti went on to point out. “It’s about money, but hopefully not only [that]. The selection will be very curated, like a festival. We hope it will attract extra attention and hopefully that will help close the budget of the film.”
The Fondazione Prada Film Fund also unveiled the names of the high-caliber consultants it has recruited who will be instrumental in the decision-making process. They are Argentinian programmer and producer Violeta Bava; Paolo Bertolin, who is film curator and artistic director of New Zealand International Film Festival; Émilie Bujès, artistic director of France’s Festival Visions du Réel; Michelle Carey, consultant for international festivals and former director of Melbourne International Film Festival; Deepti D’Cunha, programmer and former artistic director of MAMI Mumbai Film Festival; Claire Diao, critic and programmer, founder of Sudu Connexion distribution company; Sergio Fant, selector and curator for European festivals; Evgeny Gusyatinskiy, programmer and critic; Daniela Persico, programmer, critic and director of the Bellaria Film Festival; Venice fest programmer Alessandra Speciale; and Portugal-based producer Yaoting Zhang.
Unlike the Prada-supported Miu Miu Women’s Tales series of shorts, which is an integral component of the Venice Days section at Venice and features works all loosely inspired by Miu Miu clothes and accessories, the Prada Film Fund projects will have no ties whatsoever to the fashion brand.
The Fondazione Prada, which has its headquarters in a Milan arts center that has a bar designed by Wes Anderson, has long been active in the film sphere. It recently hosted a major exhibit of storyboards by more than 50 famed filmmakers and animators, including Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini, Steven Spielberg, Wes Anderson and Alfred Hitchcock.
Under Moretti’s guidance, its Cinema Godard movie theater has stepped up its screening series and onstage conversations with name directors including Alfonso Cuarón, Xavier Dolan, Luca Guadagnino, Werner Herzog, Jia Zhangke and Rebecca Zlotowski, to name a few.
