Film Forum

Actor and producer Cate Blanchett, together with International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) Hubert Bals Fund, will host the New York premiere of the Displacement Film Fund’s inaugural slate of films on November 11 at Film Forum. Co-founded and led by Blanchett, the Displacement Film Fund (DFF) was established to champion and fund the work of displaced filmmakers, or filmmakers with a proven track record in creating authentic stories focused on the experiences of displaced people.

Timely, surprising and intimate, the shorts in this critically acclaimed collection are directed by internationally renowned filmmakers Maryna Er Gorbach (Ukraine), Mo Harawe (Somalia-Austria), Hasan Kattan (Syria), Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran), and Shahrbanoo Sadat (Afghanistan). All five films will be presented at Film Forum, with filmmakers Maryna Er Gorbach and Mo Harawe in person at each program.

After premiering at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, this collection was invited to the London, Sao Paulo (Mostra), and Tokyo international film festivals.

Rotation
dir. Maryna Er Gorbach (Ukraine, Turkey) 12 min. 
Rotation is a therapeutic hypnosis ritual experienced by a young Ukrainian woman who shifted from civilian life to military service. She needs support to adapt to the displaced reality she now lives in. Gorbach’s KLONDIKE was Winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Directing Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

Super Afghan Gym
dir. Shahrbanoo Sadat (Germany) 14 min.
In a gym in downtown Kabul, a group of housewives gather during the only hour of the day reserved for women. They train at lunchtime behind closed doors, talking about body norms and their daily life. Sadat’s most recent film, NO GOOD MEN, was the opening night selection of the 2026 Berlin Film Festival.

Allies in Exile 
dir. Hasan Kattan (United Kingdom) 40 min.
For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together through war and storytelling. Confined inside a UK asylum hotel, Hasan and Fadi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain. Kattan served as cinematographer on the Oscar®-winning The White Helmets and assistant director on the Oscar®-nominated LAST MEN IN ALEPPO.

Whispers of a Burning Scent
dir. Mo Harawe (Somalia, Austria, Germany) 27 min. 
On the day of a decisive court hearing and an important wedding performance, a quiet wedding musician finds his private life exposed to public scrutiny. Accused of exploiting his marriage, he moves between courtroom, city streets and stage, carrying the weight of judgment, loyalty, and unspoken guilt. Forced to make a restrained but irreversible decision, the film observes a man whose inner truth remains elusive, caught between devotion, dignity, and loss. Harawe’s feature debut, THE VILLAGE NEXT TO PARADISE, was the first Somali film featured as an official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, where it had its world premiere in 2024.

Sense of Water 
dir. Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran, Germany) 39 min.
In the chill of exile, an Iranian writer confronts a foreign language—a language in which he must rediscover love, anger, joy, and sorrow in order to write again. His quest to reclaim the power of writing becomes an inner journey between memory and forgetting, between a lost language and a new one, where human emotion and meaning must be recreated anew. Rasoulof directed THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (Special Jury Prize winner at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival) and THERE IS NO EVIL (Golden Bear winner at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival), both Film Forum U.S. theatrical premieres.

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With one in every 70 people on earth forcibly displaced due to conflict, war, or persecution, the global community is witnessing an unprecedented crisis. The Displacement Film Fund was first conceived at the 2023 Global Refugee Forum, hosted by UNHCR and the world’s largest gathering dedicated to addressing challenges faced by refugees and their host communities. Blanchett joined forces with a group of film industry experts and creatives, all of whom have a personal connection and/or strong interest in the issue of forced displacement—and established the Fund—which launched at IFFR 2025—with a mission of giving visibility and bringing to the mainstream stories of displacement, while highlighting the diversity of displacement-related life experiences.

IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund is the Management Partner and it was founded in partnership with the Amahoro Coalition, MASTERMIND, the Tamer Family Foundation, UNIQLO and Droom en Daad. In 2026, the SP Lohia Foundation joined as Main Partner. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency act as Strategic Partner.

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