Annemarie Jacir & Rithy Panh Projects Among Titles Selected By Displacement Film Fund
International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) Displacement Film Fund has revealed the five filmmakers selected for the second cycle of its short film grant scheme: Mohammed Amer, Annemarie Jacir, Akuol de Mabior, Bao Nguyen and Rithy Panh.
Established in 2025, the fund is spearheaded by Cate Blanchett, actor, producer and global Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, with partners including the UN Refugee Agency and IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.
Backed by a coalition of film industry experts, creators, business leaders and philanthropists, the fund aims to support the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a proven track record in creating authentic storytelling about the experiences of displaced people.
Each of the nominated filmmakers will be given a production grant of €100,000, with their completed projects receiving their world premieres at IFFR 2027 (January 28-February 7).
Filmmakers supported by the fund’s first cycle included Maryna Er Gorbach, Mo Harawe, Hasan Kattan, Mohammad Rasoulof and Shahrbanoo Sadat. The films premiered at this year’s IFFR and will also play at the upcoming Tokyo International Film Festival (October 26-November 4).
Cate Blanchett, DFF co-founder and leader, said: “Our first round of DFF shorts have been met with huge enthusiasm from both the industry and our partners, while challenging expectations about what stories of displacement can look like on screen. The short form is a fantastic medium for these narratives and the way audiences are connecting with the first five films is extraordinary."
The new grant recipients and their projects are:
Return To Sender (working title) (Palestine, US)
Dir: Mohammed Amer
After receiving his refugee travel document, a Palestinian stand-up comedian embarks on the world tour of his dreams, but each new country presents increasingly absurd immigration hurdles that test his emotional and mental resolve.
Deconstruction (working title) (Palestine)
Dir: Annemarie Jacir
Set in Haifa – a city built on layers of presence and absence, memory and reinvention – Deconstruction follows a man navigating the in-between as the past is uncovered, rearranged, sold, and made new.
Traces Of A Broken Line (working title) (South Africa, South Sudan)
Dir: Akuol de Mabior
War breaks a lineage, forcing a mother to preserve what she can no longer pass down.
How To Ride A Bike (working title) (US, Vietnam)
Dir: Bao Nguyen
A Vietnamese refugee father who never learned to ride a bike tries to teach his young son, and when he fails, begins learning in secret, confronting a lifelong shame he has carried since boyhood.
Time… Speak (working title) (France,Germany)
Dir: Rithy Panh
An exiled filmmaker returns to the broken fragments of his memory – shattered figurines, archives, and silences – to reconstruct through cinema a form of life in which the disappeared continue to speak.
