Fondazione Prada has announced the launch of the Fondazione Prada Film Fund, a new initiative designed to celebrate and sustain independent cinema worldwide. Led by Paolo Moretti, curator of Fondazione Prada’s Cinema Godard programme, in collaboration with Rebecca De Pas of the selection committee at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the fund aims to become a vital support for bold and ambitious filmmaking the world over. The fund is worth EUR1.5 million and will officially launch in autumn 2025 through a call for entries.
Each year, the Fondazione Prada Film Fund jury will select 10–12 feature films, regardless of geography or genre. The fund’s main objective is to empower projects of high artistic value, while strengthening the institution’s two-decade legacy in the world of film. Selection will be driven by pure cinematic merit—the uniqueness of the directorial voice, and the ability of a film to contribute profoundly to contemporary film culture—and the fund will contribute to a film's key phases of development, production and post-production.
Miuccia Prada, president and director of Fondazione Prada explains, “Cinema is, for us, a laboratory for new ideas and a space of cultural education. For this reason, we have decided to actively contribute to the realisation of new works and to the support of auteur cinema. Through this fund we intend to deepen and broaden a dialogue with creation and contemporary experimentation.”
The fund is supported by a team of cinema professionals—producers, curators and internationally acknowledged experts—selected for their alignment with Fondazione Prada’s mission. It is designed to be an inherently inclusive platform, welcoming emerging talents alongside more established voices, and embracing a range of production scales and artistic perspectives that contribute to the plurality and vitality of contemporary cinema. As Moretti explains in an interview with Variety, the fund will back films “that seek to find new storytelling solutions and take on new challenges. The idea is to support a selection of films that is varied and diverse, somewhat in the spirit of the selection of a festival.”
Fondazione Prada’s cinematic journey traces back to 2003, when it first teamed up with the Tribeca Film Festival, then later partnered up with the Venice Biennale to present Belligerent Eyes, and many more in the years after. In recent years, the institution challenged conventional modes of viewership. 2020 saw its collaboration with streaming service MUBI, where online project Perfect Failures presented a programme of misunderstood films by cinematic luminaries such as Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, Kelly Reichardt, Chantal Akerman, and Paul Verhoeven.
In February 2023, alongside the Cere anatomiche (Anatomic waxes) exhibition in Milan, Fondazione Prada presented Four Unloved Women, Adrift on a Purposeless Sea, Experience the Ecstasy of Dissection, a previously unreleased short film by David Cronenberg. And from February 2023 onwards, under Moretti’s curatorial direction, the Fondazione’s cinematic programme entered a new phase, marking a renewal of its approach and a greater openness to new forms and geographies of cinema. The theatre was renamed Cinema Godard in September, as tribute to the French-Swiss auteur’s rich legacy and enduring influence in cinema.
Cinema Godard has hosted some of the most significant cinematic voices of our time—from Wes Anderson, and Bertrand Bonello to Pia Marais, and Fiona Tan. And there's no signs of stopping. This year, Fondazione Prada will be presenting two exhibitions: curated by Melissa Harris, A Kind of Language: Storyboards and Other Renderings for Cinema (on view until 8 September 2025) explores the creative journey behind filmmaking; followed by an immersive exhibition by Alejandro G. Iñárritu that will explore the cinematic and cultural dimensions of his debut feature, Amores Perros, from 18 September 2025 to 26 February 2026.
