“We’re being asked to check our humanity at the door”: Cate Blanchett and Shahrbanoo Sadat on cinema’s power to reconnect us
Marking the UK debut of the Displacement Film Fund’s first five shorts, Cate Blanchett and filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat talk creative risk, resilient communities and the importance of bringing displaced perspectives into the cinematic mainstream.
Having made waves with critics and audiences upon its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the inaugural collection of five short films presented by Cate Blanchett for the Displacement Film Fund makes its UK debut at this year’s BFI London Film Festival.
The diverse works cut across comedy, drama, fiction and non-fiction, with running times between 12 and 40 minutes and have been made by directors working with a budget of €100,000 each. The films are Rotation by Maryna Er Gorbach (Klondike, 2022), Whispers of a Burning Scent by Mo Harawe (The Village Next to Paradise, 2024), Allies in Exile by Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al Halabi (producer and cinematographer of Death Without Mercy, 2024), Sense of Water by Mohammad Rasoulof (The Seed of the Sacred Fig, 2024) and Super Afghan Gym by Shahrbanoo Sadat (No Good Men, 2026).
Each funded film has been made by displaced filmmakers or filmmakers with a proven track record in making authentic stories about the experiences of displaced people. The films are chosen from a longlist of filmmakers determined by a nominations committee, before a selection committee, chaired by Blanchett, decides on final recipients.
The DFF’s managing partner is Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund, with Amahoro Coalition, Master Mind, the Tamer Family Foundation and UNIQLO serving as founding partners (UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, are in place as strategic partner). At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, a second cohort of filmmakers were chosen, comprising Mohammed Amer, Annemarie Jacir, Akuol de Mabior, Bao Nguyen and Rithy Panh. The SP Lohia Foundation joined in this second year as a major partner.
We spoke to Blanchett and Sadat to hear what unites the films, why short films are a great place for directors to experiment and what the future may bring for the fund’s filmmakers.
Cate, what was it about these particular films and filmmakers that made you think that they’d be worthy of receiving the production grant?
Cate Blanchett: It was in the DNA of the programme that we wanted to present the cornucopia – as much as we could, with only being able to support five filmmakers – but we were interested in films and filmmakers that would challenge the stereotype or the profiling around displaced voices.
What was unexpectedly glorious was that the power of the cohort has become as important and vital as the power of each of the individual filmmakers, so it’s the interplay of those points of view which is really wonderful. When we screened them in Rotterdam that was the first time the filmmakers were actually meeting. Over time, as we become, hopefully, a legacy fund, we’ll build a network of support for filmmakers. The festivals have been incredibly supportive in amplifying and supporting those networks. But we really wanted to support established, experienced filmmakers whose careers have been disrupted, impacted or influenced by displacement, but also filmmakers who are alive to these narratives, [though] not necessarily displaced.
Why the medium of short film?
Blanchett: I love short films because they are amuse-bouche in a way. They’re places for filmmakers to stretch and experiment. And often what is taken away from people who are living through displacement – filmmakers included – is freedom. What we wanted to afford the filmmakers is an absolute freedom to experiment. There was no pressure or manifesto or prescription over what the filmmaker would discuss. If you look at, say, Mo Harawe’s film, it doesn’t speak one-to-one with displacement, but the central character is very displaced from his own life. It’s an incredibly surprising approach when you think, OK, these are films are about ‘refugee experiences’.
Shahrbanoo, what was the inspiration behind Super Afghan Gym?
Shahrbanoo Sadat: I had just finished another film project that took me six years, when I was contacted by the Displacement Film Fund. It was exactly the opposite of the process of the project that I was working on, because my other project was endless. Then, I have this short film: you have this year, you have this money, and there’s no expectation. This is a dream.
I had the idea when I was in Kabul. I found myself scouting for the perfect gym, and I soon realised that it’s actually very difficult, because all these spaces and the good times are taken by men. Finally, I found a gym where I could do my sprinting from 12 lunchtime to one o’clock. There I met a bunch of housewives who were living in the neighbourhood. They were older and either going for health reasons or because their husbands send them to the gym to gain the perfect body. I found myself among these women, and I remember their stories and their frustration, and their fun: having picnics in the gym, eating all kind of sweets.
Cate, aside from the films being made by either displaced filmmakers or those with a track record covering displacement, is there anything else that unites these films?
Blanchett: It’s the interplay of tone and approach that produces a strange and unexpected whole. They stand of themselves. If you compare, say, Shahrbanoo’s film and Hasan’s documentary, you couldn’t get more different form. The approach is wildly different. But even when you laugh, there is an underpinning of melancholy, which is underpinning all our lives at the moment. We’re all facing a lot of grief and loss as the world is rapidly changing, [and we’re] being asked to check our humanity at the door.
They all play with memory in some way. My experience doesn’t sit one to one with any of these experiences, but I found that theirs touched parts of my own life, and I think that’s the power of bringing displaced narratives into the mainstream. One of the defining functions of art – and cinema is no different – is that you have to control and provoke and confront, and tickle the viewer into connecting with experiences and perspectives outside their own.
Shahrbanoo, would you be interested in turning your film into a feature or expanding on it in some way?
Blanchett: I think you should. I’d love to meet all those women’s lives outside that room. That’s my two cents.
Sadat: It’s a brilliant idea, but the thing is, when I was back from the premiere in Rotterdam, I posted something on my social media – Facebook for me is a place where I meet my Afghan community. I received a lot of messages from men telling me that I’m lying, no women are going to the gym anywhere in Kabul.
At the same time, women were messaging me in private telling me, “Yes, I live in Kabul, it’s five years the Taliban have been here, I cannot go to school and I cannot go to work, but there is this secret gym in my neighbourhood, and I’m going there and look at my muscle!” They were sending me pictures. As a filmmaker who doesn’t live in Afghanistan right now it gives me a lot of hope, because you’re reading the news and you feel overwhelmed because it’s just bad news: “Taliban are banning this. This is not allowed, this is not allowed. Work is not allowed. Education is not allowed.” But this is not how life is working and this is absolutely not how women are behaving, reacting with reality. I love it. I love this about these brave women that they’re making their own reality and they just find a way to make some muscle. So, maybe I’m thinking about it [making a feature].
Cate, to what extent are you also kind of keeping an eye on potential future collaborators when you put these things together?
Blanchett: You never know what conversation, what chance meeting, what tangential association is going to bear fruit. It’s been such a privilege and so electrifying to be in these filmmakers’ orbit. The second cohort as well, the conversations that we’ve had both practical and concrete, ideological and creative, have already started my personal creative juices flowing.
Why is cinema particularly important as a medium for tackling issues like displacement?
Blanchett: We are facing a present where people who have the security of living in nations untouched by war are being encouraged to be displaced from our humanity. Cinema, in whatever way we consume it, is a place for us to reconnect to experiences outside our own, to expand our sense of humanity and our capacity to hold dissonance. A big foundational reason for establishing the fund was a group of us at the Global Refugee Forum back in 2023 circled around the idea of why, when one in 67 people on earth [are displaced] are stories of displacement not more in the mainstream? It’s a place where we can bring often politicised topics that we need to address, but you do it in a way that doesn’t tell people what to think, but provides a prompt for people to be able to pick them apart. We need to gather and connect and discuss these things. Cinema alone is not the answer, but it is a prompt.
Sadat: I don’t have any other option. When I make a film, it’s not, like, “I’m an expert on this topic and let me explain to you how it works.” It was part of me educating myself and discovery. I’ve been a refugee all my life. I was born a refugee, in Iran, and my parents fled from Afghanistan. Some time ago I was in Italy and I met an American filmmaker, and they told me that they left America after Trump, and this was the first time that I connected. I was, like, “Ah, so you’re also displaced.”
When we say refugee, the cliché is people from Afghanistan, Syria, the war countries. But we’re living in a world where sooner or later all of us will be unfortunate for a political reason or a climate reason. This is what I really love about this project – it gives you a different perspective.