Cate Blanchett Unveils Round 2 of Displacement Film Fund in Rotterdam: We Are Becoming “Displaced From Our Own Humanity”

Cate Blanchett and the world premieres of the first five short films made by directors from Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ukraine with grants of €100,000 ($120,000) each from the Displacement Film Fund, a scheme unveiled last year by the star and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)’s Hubert Bals Fund were in the spotlight in the Dutch port city on Friday.

Iranian auteur Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), Maryna Er Gorbach, the Ukrainian director known for Klondike, Somali-Austrian filmmaker Mo Harawe (The Village Next to Paradise), Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, who fled to Germany and will next month open the Berlin Film Festival, and Syria’s Hasan Kattan (Last Men in Aleppo) premiered their films and discussed them and the fund’s work during a press conference with Blanchett.

Also unveiled during a press event was a second round of the grant scheme, whose strategic partner is the Un Refugee Agency,…