Out Of Africa: Projects From Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan Selected For €10,000 Hubert Bals Fund

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund has unveiled its selection of 20 projects to receive a grant of €10,000 each under its flagship Development Support Scheme 2026, with three African titles making the list.

This year’s HBF Development Scheme cohort features a number of projects that deal with themes of displacement, migration and belonging. Some other films feature examinations of ageing and later life.

The selected projects from Africa include:

Filme De Arquivo (Sudan, Kenya)
Director: Lincoln Péricles
A film archive researcher with the rare ability to physically enter archival films is hired to investigate erased family histories, but each journey into the archive brings image and reality closer to collapse.

In the Wake of Yesterday (Nigeria)
Director: Babatunde Apalowo
When a records keeper in a drought-governed Sahel village refuses to register her unborn child under a false name, she is exiled into the desert, where she discovers the archive that condemned her is only one fragment of a vast system stretching far beyond her world.

Lady Pearl (South Africa)
Director: Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi
A low-wage employee of an enigmatic luxury hotel nicknamed Lady Pearl is rewarded with a single night’s stay during the low season. As her family gradually arrives to claim the reward alongside her, they are mistaken for paying guests, and the promised night inexplicably distends into an endless stay, exposing the hotel’s glamour as an elegant mirage built on exploitation.

Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the Hubert Bals Fund, said: “In times where development funding is increasingly under threat, it’s remarkable that we’ve been able to increase our grant allocation, from 15 in 2025 to 20 in 2026. The selection reflects an incredible breadth of contemporary filmmaking – distinctive voices expressing their artistic freedom, whatever the context. None of this would be possible without our partners, new and old, who help us to offer this early support to the world’s most promising filmmaking talent.”

Find out more on the Hubert Bals Fund here.