Feature projects by three women writer-directors from Ukraine, Lebanon and India with female protagonists at the centre have been awarded a total of over €800,000 in production support by the Franco-German ‘mini-traité; co-production fund at its latest session held in Paris.
The fund, which is jointly administered and financed by France’s CNC and the German Federal Film Fund (FFA), allocated €400,000 to Ukrainian actress Masha Kondakova’s Warrior, to be produced by Germany’s Weydemann Bros. and France’s Ici et Là Productions. The producers plan to attach further partners from Ukraine and Poland.
Kondakova’s feature fiction debut centres on a female sniper returning home from the frontline, who then has to fight another battle against loggers illegally exporting lumber to Europe, destroying the trees of her childhood.
The project had been developed at the So Film Genre residency and the Torino ScriptLab. Most recently, it was presented at a showcase of Ukrainian projects staged by the Berlinale’s European Film Market in February.
Kondakova’s previous work includes the documentaries Inner Wars (2020), following three women soldiers in the war zone in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Second Wind (2025) about five Ukrainian soldiers, four of whom are amputees, taking up the challenge to reach the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
Additionally, €220,000 in production support was awarded to Lebanese musician-writer-director Michelle Keserwany’s debut feature Amara to be produced by France’s Tanit Films and Berlin-based X Filme Creative Pool, and co-produced by Denmark’s Zentropa and as yet unnamed Lebanese partner.
Keserwany’s project follows the unexpected change in the life of a horoscope show host at a politically affiliated radio station in Beirut when she is asked to replace the news anchor who was fired due to the country’s economic crisis.
Living between Paris and Beirut since 2019, Kerswany had previously co-written the screenplay for Capernaum with the director Nadine Labaki and also wrote her debut short film Les Chenilles, which she co-directed with her sister Noel in 2022.
Les Chenilles won the Golden Bear for best short film when it had its international premiere at the Berlinale in 2023
The third project was Indian director Megha Ramaswamy’s Reshma Shera, which has received €200,000 for the co-production between France’s JBA Production and NiKo Film’s Nicole Gerhards. Production partners from India and Greece will hopefully join the project.
Set in an illegal mica mining community in India, Ramaswamy’s screenplay centres on a nine-year-old girl who is forced to marry a dog because she was born with a dog tooth in her upper jaw to ward off bad luck from the adults in the community.
Ramaswamy’s second feature-length film, after her 2019 debut, What Are The Odds, has also received support from the German regional film funds Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and nordmedia as well as the CNC’s Aides aux Cinémas du Monde and the broadcasters ZDF/ARTE.
In 2025, the ‘Mini-traité’ fund supported films including Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Costume, Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Cannes Competition title Minotaur, Faouzi Bensaïdi’s Love Story In 10 Songs, 3 Weddings and 1 Kiss, and Helena Wittmann’s The City.
Annual total funding made available from the two countries for the fund amounts to €3.2m. Of this, €200,000 is earmarked for project development to support the next generation of producers.
