At the beginning of the year, Selin Murat left her role as markets manager at IDFA to take on the position of executive director of the IDFA Bertha Fund. She stepped into big shoes, taking over the position from Isabel Arrate Fernandez, one of the fund’s founders and its executive director for a whopping 23 years. Fernandez moved chairs herself, becoming IDFA’s artistic director while maintaining her deputy director role in a part-time capacity to oversee strategic filmmaker support activities.
Speaking with Variety ahead of her first edition of the Dutch festival in her new position, Murat says she thought the idea of being a funder for the first time “to be interesting” after over 15 years in the field as a producer and industry programmer. “I was in the industry working with filmmakers, producers, professionals and funders who were all trying to do the same thing, which is to make independent documentary films together,” she says.
The first few months on the job were “like being underwater,” adds Murat. “This year, we did four rounds of funding, so I spent a lot of time reading and inviting selection committee members.” In 2025, 16 IBF-supported films are also playing IDFA, including Massoud Bakhshi’s “All My Sisters,” María Silvia Esteve’s “Mailin” and Vladlena Sandu’s “Memory.” On top of the volume of work, there are other major challenges in the industry, from the struggle documentarians face to make a living through their work to how key documentary filmmaking is in times of sociopolitical unrest.
Commenting on the former, Murat says documentary filmmaking is “consistently in crisis.” “Many filmmakers are working under really hard conditions, whether it is financially or related to conflict, war, oppression and freedom of speech. We are in this beautiful niche part of the overall film industry, the most valiant in a way. I’ve been in the industry my whole life and sustainability has always been difficult. Every decade brings a new challenge. It’s been all the more amazing to be where I am because I get to work closely with filmmakers and we can work for solutions together. Then, on top of that, we as a fund can at least give straight financial support.”
As for supporting filmmakers during wartime, the fund has launched special funding initiatives for Ukrainian and Palestinian filmmakers in recent years, which directly speaks to its mission of “strengthening independent, author-driven documentary filmmaking in regions and communities where access to funding and distribution for independent creative documentary film is structurally challenging.” Today, the fund supports projects across Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean and Oceania.
Murat says independent documentaries from countries like Ukraine, Palestine, Congo and Sudan defy “easy consumption.” According to her, these are films that “have been made over a long period of time with a lot of thought and bring out the complexity of the human experience from the ground with narrative sovereignty.” Such films are the reason “why everyone should be watching independent documentaries,” adds the exec.
“Mailin,” courtesy of IDFA
Courtesy of IDFA
With such urgent projects in need of funding, how does IBF choose which ones to go for? “The selection committees ask: What is the mandate of the fund? What am I looking for? We try as much as possible to think about artistry,” she says. “Some funds are about impact, some are specifically about socipolitical issues. For the moment, the mandate of the IBF is to support independent filmmakers making films from their own perspective. That’s what we try to stick to when making decisions.”
With her first year on the job soon coming to an end, Murat is reflecting on some of her main goals with the fund. Amongst her main objectives is to have the fund support not only projects and filmmakers but also to foment the “structures” that surround them and create sustainable communities. She recalls when one of the founders of the Palestine Film Fund told her they could use funding for “knowledge sharing so we can have another entity set itself up sustainably in the future.”
“I would love to keep doing that in all the regions that we serve,” she says. “Projects will always be really important; it is always going to be about the independent filmmaker, but also the idea of fostering a healthy community. At IBF, we are three people; we can’t know how all the communities function. We don’t know what is most important in a local community or territory and don’t speak all the languages of the countries we support. I would like for us to be connected sustainably with local, independent, like-minded communities that are doing that work on the ground. If we can support that, that would be really cool.”
