New Guidelines and Eligibility Criteria for SØRFOND
New and updated guidelines are now available. Changes entails a new list of eligible countries, and an increased focus on SØRFOND's overall objective in the evaluation process.
On request from our main financier, the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, we have now revised and updated the guidelines and eligibility criteria for SØRFOND. Here is a short summary of the main changes:
The overall objective of SØRFOND has always been to stimulate to the production of films in developing countries where such production is limited by political or economic causes. In the fund's new and revised guidelines this overall objective is now given stronger emphasis through the introduction of a pre-selection process.
However, the most important new change in the SØRFOND's new guidelines is the introduction of a new and concentrated list of eligible countries. Countries eligible to apply grants from SØRFOND, are now to be those that are on the list of countries eligible to receive aid (ODA) from Norway. This is due to the fact that it is the Norwgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs who finance SØRFOND, and that they now wants us to focus only on their so called 'List of 85 countries'. The new and revised list of countries eligible to apply SØRFOND can be found here.
Grants from SØRFOND shall contribute to strengthening film as a cultural expression, to promoting diversity and artistic integrity on the international film scene, and to strengthening freedom of expression. For the full verison of the updated guidelines click here, more information about the SØRFOND's eligibility criteria is found here.
Sørfond is jointly run by Stiftelsen Festivalkontoret (the foundation in charge of the Films from the South Festival) and the Norwegian Film Institute.
With the help from the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sørfond has since the beginning in 2011, supported 42 films from developing countries. With support from Creative Europe's MEDIA-programme, an additional 5 films was supported through one round of grants from Sørfond+ in 2017.