Ibermedia awards $50,000 to Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola to create grants for Latin American students

Ibermedia’s Ibero-American Support Fund has once again selected Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola’s proposal in the Support for Training Programmes category (2023 Call), which was open to film and television schools, universities, professional training centres and private companies and professional associations in the audiovisual industry in Latin America and Italy.

Following approval of the decision published in early November, the Fund will award EQZE with $50,000 to create scholarships and grants to pay for tuition fees. Among other aspects, the evaluating body for this category assessed the accompaniment of the projects “from development to commercialisation”, “the importance of the studies in the area of preservation and curatorship”, and “the partnership with the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the University, other festivals and the Tabakalera centre” of a project it deemed “sound and ambitious.” Moreover, the judging panel gave EQZE almost the highest score in areas such as infrastructure, equipment, teaching staff and academic programme.

EQZE will distribute the funding via 14 grants worth $3,571 each, open to candidates selected at the school, and who come from the 23 countries who form part of the incentive programme: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola is one of the two film schools in Spain (the other is the School of Cinematography and Audiovisual of the Community of Madrid (ECAM)) to receive financial support in this category, in which another 23 training projects from among 45 proposals from 12 countries were also selected. The aim of this specific programme is to foster the continuous training of professionals in the Ibero-American and Italian audiovisual industry.

A total of 115 projects will receive funding from Ibermedia as a result of the 2023 Call for grant proposals in the areas of Co-production, Development, TV Series Development and Training. The Ibermedia Programme for providing financial funding for Ibero-American film and audiovisual production was established in 1998. Since then, it has launched more than 30 calls through which it has provided financial support to 1,049 co-production projects, 1,130 audiovisual projects in progress, and has awarded more than 2,950 training grants in 23 countries. This amounts to a total investment of $118 million, which has benefited around 3,300 projects.