This article uses the case of Kadir Ferati Balci, a Flemish filmmaker of Turkish and Albanian descent, to offer a detailed, empirical account of the potential tactics, maneuvers and discursive frameworks employed by migrant and diasporic filmmakers as they navigate public film funds and negotiate their minoritized industry position. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of policy and production documents (i.e. public funding applications) and two in-depth expert interviews with the filmmaker, it illustrates how funding agencies’ political discourses play a determinative role in shaping diasporic, minoritized workers’ quotidian practices. Nevertheless, it also reveals that they can draw upon a heightened sense of self-awareness to tactically navigate this context in a way that allows them to secure state support and public funding while deconstructing and rethinking notions of diasporic cinema, difference and recognition.
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