A year after launching the Displacement Film Fund at the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oscar-winning actor Cate Blanchett is set to return to the Dutch festival to present the first batch of short films to come out of the groundbreaking program. The titles, which include new short films by “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” director Mohammad Rasoulof and “Klondike” helmer Maryna Er Gorbach, will screen in Rotterdam on Jan. 30. You can find the full selection of films below.
Speaking exclusively with Variety ahead of the festival, Blanchett says she could “not be more excited” to share the films with the world. “The stories and the filmmakers’ approach to the experience of being displaced are deeply personal and heartbreaking, with moments of absurdity in them as well. They are as diverse and exciting as I could have hoped.”
Blanchett, also a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, launched the Displacement Film Fund last year to champion and fund the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a proven track record in creating authentic storytelling on the experiences of displaced people. The fund is supported by Master Mind, Uniqlo, Droom en Daad, the Tamer Family Foundation and Amahoro Coalition as founding partners, the Hubert Bals Fund as management partner and UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as strategic partner.
“Displacement is a global issue,” says the actor. “We have strong men and criminals trying to write themselves into the history books through force and flagrant inhumanity, which only exacerbates the collective challenge and distress around displacement. At some point, we in the industry need to welcome these displaced perspectives into our narratives and slates.”
To the actor-turned-producer, works by displaced filmmakers offer a “huge opportunity” that the industry is currently missing out on by “sidelining” stories that are “not mainstream.” “For a healthy industry, the more perspectives you have, the more alive and vibrant and relevant it is.”
“Sense of Water,” courtesy of IFFR
Blanchett gushes over how quickly the initiative and the delivery of the projects came together, a priority to her and the team, who deeply understood the element of urgency that often accompanies stories by displaced creatives. Having all projects be short films directed by experienced filmmakers also tapped into this need for speed, with a “rigorous two-stage process” established by the nomination and selection committee. “Because it all came together quickly, with the Hubert Bals Fund helping manage the budgets, we were very involved. It has all been very transparent.”
The selection committee consisted of Blanchett, “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo, “Green Border” director Agnieszka Holland, “Flee” director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, IFFR festival director Vanja Kaludjercic, “For Sama” director Waad Al Kateab, activist and refugee Aisha Khurram and Amin Nawabi [alias], an LGBTQ+ asylum seeker who inspired “Flee.”
The “TÁR” actor says it has been a “privilege” working with the selection committee and getting to know its members. “Every single person on the committee, whether it was Cynthia or Jonas, comes from different cultures, yet displacement has touched them. It does touch all of our lives, and I think some of us get sold a fear-based narrative around it. In these dark times, working together has been a big energy booster.”
Working on the project also granted Blanchett “valuable” insight into European and international funding structures. She recalls how, many years ago, “Father Mother Sister Brother” director Jim Jarmusch told her how he would “cobble his films together.”
“It was easily over a decade ago, and he would already get money from Japan, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands to maintain creative freedom,” she adds. “He opened his perspective from having to deal with finances coming from all these different cultures. This is the same thing. Sometimes, the form of something echoes the content, and given that displacement is a global challenge, the challenge of getting these shorts funded has been a global one.”
As for the future, Blanchett says she is immensely grateful for “the willingness of the private sector” in supporting initiatives like the Displacement Film Fund, and adds that it is the fund’s “responsibility and challenge” now to make sure the films move to other festivals. “We know that this is a challenging moment for the film industry more widely. Even if you have time, money, access and names, it doesn’t necessarily mean your work gets seen.”
The actor emphasizes that the shorts exist in their own right, but also as a cohort. “It became clear there were threads of experience.” Blanchett’s “dream,” she says, is that people get to experience the films together. “Eventually, once we get a passionate partner, it would be wonderful if they existed as a cohort because seeing the intersection between them is the most rewarding for me.”
Displacement Film Fund filmmakers, from left to right: Hasan Kattan, Maryna Er Gorbach (credit: Rafal Nowak), Mohammad Rasoulof, Shahrbanoo Sadat, Mo Harawe
See the full list of films from the first batch of the Displacement Film Fund below:
“Allies in Exile” dir. Hasan Kattan (United Kingdom)
Confined inside a U.K. asylum hotel, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward, exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain.
“Rotation” dir. Maryna Er Gorbach (Ukraine, Turkey)
“Rotation” is a therapeutic hypnosis ritual experienced by a young Ukrainian woman who shifted from civilian life to military service. She needs support to adapt to the displaced reality she now lives in.
“Sense of Water” dir. Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran, Germany)
In the chill of exile, an Iranian writer confronts a foreign language – a language in which he must rediscover love, anger, joy and sorrow in order to write again. His quest to reclaim the power of writing becomes an inner journey between memory and forgetting, between a lost language and a new one, where human, emotion and meaning must be recreated anew.
“Super Afghan Gym” dir. Shahrbanoo Sadat (Germany)
In a gym in downtown Kabul, a group of housewives gather during the only hour of the day reserved for women. They train at lunchtime behind closed doors, talking about body norms and their daily life.
“Whispers of a Burning Scent” dir. Mo Harawe (Somalia, Austria, Germany)
On the day of a decisive court hearing and an important wedding performance, a quiet wedding musician finds his private life exposed to public scrutiny. Accused of exploiting his marriage, he moves between courtroom, city streets and stage, carrying the weight of judgment, loyalty, and unspoken guilt. Forced to make a restrained but irreversible decision, the film observes a man whose inner truth remains elusive, caught between devotion, dignity and loss.
The 2026 Rotterdam Film Festival takes place between Jan. 29 – Feb. 8.
