Quarterly Newsletter #1 — 2025
Rolling with the punches of the world
These past few months, the ICFR inboxes have mirrored the state of the world we inhabit in no uncertain terms — a clear and undeniable surge in requests for help from film workers across the globe, in line with the palpable increase in human rights violations and authoritarianism in far too many places. Filmmakers, whose medium reaches (relatively) easily across borders and into minds far and wide, find themselves under particular scrutiny from ill-meaning governments, leading to unwarranted arrests, unlawful detainment, prosecution under the guise of the law, and various sorts of physical and psychological abuse that cannot bear the light of the day.
As ever, it is the ICFR’s mission to pull these injustices into the very light. At the same time, we are also seeing that visibility and exposure in and of itself is not necessarily enough to make a direct difference. In Iran, filmmakers Maryam Moghadam & Behtash Sanaeeha have received a verdict in the trial concerning their Berlinale-awarded (and allegedly “obscene” and “anti-state propaganda”) film My Favourite Cake — with the global outcry in their support (more than 18,000 signatures at the time of writing, including those of Pedro Almodóvar, Hiam Abbass, Juliette Binoche & Ali Abbasi) arguably impacting the verdict, but not yet resulting in their charges being dropped altogether, as they should be.
The recent Academy Award win for the Palestinian-Israeli documentary No Other Land has only escalated the violence of Israeli settlers and armed forces against the people of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank — including the Palestinian co-directors Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, with the latter being attacked, violently arrested and detained only two weeks ago.