While FILMBOOST's international jury evaluates the applications, we have another piece of good news. Our Irish partners, Irish Filmmakers supporting Filmmakers, with the support of Element Pictures & Screen Directors Guild of Ireland, will provide an additional award of €2,000 for aspiring filmmakers to create a short documentary or feature film!

Throughout the DOCU/HELP initiative, our colleagues from Ireland supported Ukrainian filmmakers who were documenting war crimes. They involved film industry professionals who were able to fundraise €10,000 to support our and the ICFR Ukraine initiative.

Towards the end of the fundraising campaign, Element Pictures producers and founders Ed Guiney and director Lenny Abrahamson asked director and screenwriter Orla Murphy to auction off some of the props from the popular BBC series Normal People, raising in a result €2,500. As the DOCU/HELP initiative grew into the FILMBOOST initiative, the IFSF decided to grant €2,000 of funds raised to director/s to create short film/s. They also arranged funding for a week of post-production from the Irish post-production company Outer Limits. "We offer this scholarship to encourage emerging filmmakers to continue to create. We hope it will help them to grow in confidence, experience and create something which will enrich our cinema culture," Orla Murphy says.

Darya Bassel, Head of DOCU/PRO Industry Platform, "I think it's a great initiative, and it's nice that we have an opportunity to encourage emerging professionals and give them opportunities to create."

The winning film that will receive the Irish Filmmakers Supporting Filmmakers award will be announced on September 2, along with a list of all FILMBOOST scholarship fellows.

FILMBOOST was launched by the NGO Docudays and Deutsche Filmakademie e.V. with the assistance of the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Goethe-Institut.