Four projects selected for third round of New Dawn, including Irish documentary by Cara Holmes
Posted: 7th December 2023
Four brand new projects have been selected for the international film production fund New Dawn, an initiative of ten public funds aiming to open the film industry to the many voices and perspectives in our continuously changing society. Supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, Communauté Française de Belgique - Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel, Flanders Audiovisual Fund, Film Fund Luxembourg, Finnish Film Foundation, Norwegian Film Institute, Swedish Film Institute, Telefilm Canada, Instituto Português do Cinema e do Audiovisual and Netherlands Film Fund, New Dawn is striving for a vibrant, open, and inclusive film industry with true diversity of perspectives, filmic expressions, and relevance for everyone.
An independent committee selected 2 documentaries and 2 feature films from a total of 41 applications, including Lesbian Lines by Irish filmmaker Cara Holmes. The projects and filmmakers were chosen for their unique voices and perspectives, their compelling commitment to telling these stories in a way that seamlessly aligns with New Dawn's mission and will, according to the committee, contribute to a more open and inclusive film industry.
The selected projects are:
- Lesbian Lines (Ireland) - Documentary
Director and Script: Cara Holmes
Producer: Keeper Pictures
An intimate docu-fiction film about a network of underground telephone helplines, revealing how and why these urgently needed helplines were set up by a small community of Irish lesbians.
- Composées (Canada) - Documentary
Director and Script: Nadia Louis-Desmarchais
Producer: Pimiento Médias
Like a multi-layered collective story, Composées immerses itself in the director's quest for identity in the face of the conflicting relationship she’s had since childhood with her own mixed-race identity. She revisits her childhood archive videos and meets with eight other women in order to explore the heart of the torn identity that they all experience on a daily basis. Through poetic, intimate and sensory imagery, Composées plunges to the heart of the universal need of belonging.
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Jude & the Jinn (Canada) - Feature film
Director and Script: Rolla Tahir
Producer: Qareen Inc, Fugitive Works Studios and Magic Carpet Productions
Between no longer and not yet, there exists Jude, a thirty-something nubian newcomer, who spirals into a pit of depression shortly after her father is deported, which she is aided out of when she meets and befriends a jinn.
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Tahmina (Netherlands, Canada, Germany) - Feature Film
Director and Script: Aboozar Amini
Producer: Silk Road Films
A corpse must be whole for the soil to accept it, believes Tahmina, a goddess of the Hindu Kush Mountains, who scours the explosion sites for human organs. She reassembles the blown-up bodies to allow their souls pass onto the afterworld. But things find a way to go wrong…
