At the Cannes Film Festival, Indonesia has revealed the four film projects that would be the first recipients of the nation’s first government-funded film grant, called Film Matchfund.
According to Variety, Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, Nadiem Makarim, introduced the $13 million annual fund in Cannes in 2023. It comes from the National Cultural Endowment Fund of the nation. The Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology’s 1:1 matching grant programme is intended to foster global collaborations among filmmakers. It is available for international co-production projects involving Indonesia, as well as incentives for internal promotion, distribution, production, post-production, and story development and research.
The qualifying films are: Garin Nugroho’s “Samsara,” produced by Gita Fara and Cineria Films; Mouly Surya’s “This City Is a Battlefield,” produced by Rama Adi and Fauzan Zidni, with Cinesurya serving as the production company; and Loeloe Hendra’s “Tale of the Land,” produced by Yulia Evina Bhara, Amerta Kusuma, and KawanKawan Media.
A total of €1.38 million ($1.5 million) in grants from various qualified international sources, including the Hubert Bals Fund, CNC Cinema du Monde, World Cinema Fund, SŸrfond, IMDA, and several more, have been given to these four projects. The grant will match that amount. All Indonesian filmmakers who are working on projects with financing from abroad are now eligible to apply for the programme, which was launched with the introduction of the four pilot projects.
The declaration was made on Monday night at Cannes’ Indonesian Night. “We hope that this fund will not only support Indonesian filmmakers in manifesting their creative ideas, but will have an impact on expanding international networks and increasing the capacity of Indonesian filmmakers to the world standards, various transfers of expertise, then in the long run they will produce films about Indonesia’s diversity for the world,” stated Hilmar Farid, director general of culture at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia.
“Many foreign parties expressed interest to collaborate with Indonesian producers at the Spotlight Asia event at the Cannes Market yesterday due to interest in this matching fund,” continued Alex Sihar, special assistant to the director general of culture, who represented Indonesia in Cannes as chair of the Asian Film Alliance Network.
