World Cinema Fund
"The more local, the more international"

For ten years, the World Cinema Fund has been promoting film production and distribution in the focus regions of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, the Caucasus and the countries of Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The WCF has since established itself as one of the leading institutions in the area of international funding for ambitious productions. It's high time for a conversation with Vincenzo Bugno, one of the WCF's two project managers.

Why was the WCF created, ten years ago?

Our goal was to develop focused collaborations between German producers and filmmakers outside of Europe, and to support the film industry in regions where the infrastructure for filmmaking is weak. In concrete terms, that means the German producers are the administrative recipients of our funding, but 100 percent of the money must be spent in the funding regions. From the start, our goal was to support highly ambitious film projects, both artistically and in content. We look for authenticity, and it's important to us to work as closely as possible alongside the cultural identity of the funding region. We don't advocate for globalised, market-compliant productions or content; instead, we look very closely at content and narratives. "The more local, the more international" is something of a dogma at the World Cinema Fund.

Doesn't that conflict with the condition that a German co-producer must be involved?

I think we've developed a very productive model that creates opportunities for simultaneous growth for both German and foreign producers equally. In many countries, the producer's role isn't as strong as it is in Germany. On the other hand, in part thanks to the World Cinema Fund, a group of young producers has come together here in Germany who is passionately committed to making the kind of film projects that we want to fund. Projects with a hint of the exotic, or that seem tailored to the European market aren't interesting for them, or for us.

Can you comment on the selection process? When submissions arrive, what stage of development are the projects in?

Once again, the artistic and structural quality of the films is the most important criterion for funding. The European distribution world is relatively complicated, and sometimes films that have won awards at important festivals still have a really hard time getting distributed. So moderate strategic considerations can play a role for us when selecting films for distribution funding, for instance when we're trying to create visibility for a certain region in German cinemas. But again, I must emphasize: The quality has to be there first.

Are these complications really inherent in German distribution structure, or could it be said that there is a discrepancy between public cinema audiences, and festival juries or audiences?

That's a very complicated question, and one equally difficult to assess. What can definitely be said is that within Europe, there are still big differences country to country. In France, one million people saw Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Nader and Simin, A Separation) by Asghar Farhadi, which won the Golden Bear in 2011, whereas in highly populated Germany the movie drew just under 150,000 viewers. That definitely has to do with certain respective cinematic traditions; what role distribution politics played would have to be carefully examined. We try to make at least a small difference. As an addition to our classic distribution funding - which will continue because we believe in the cinema as a secular temple - this year we're introducing a new project: "WCF on Demand". Instead of making a DVD box like we did a few years ago, first we'll be offering ten WCF films that more or less encapsulate our entire identity in video-on-demand format. It's a pilot project that the German Federal Cultural Foundation - which helped initiate the WCF ten years ago and has assured its support until 2018 - will also be seeing through with us.