Seventeen may be considered an unlucky number in Italy but the international filmmaking participants of the 17th TorinoFilmLab (TFL) Meeting Event, preferred to describe their experience of the biggest-ever edition as “life-changing” - in a good way.
The three-day event took place in the northern Italian city of Turin from November 20-23 as the culmination of TFL’s year-round labs and workshops. It brought together the first and second-time writers, directors and producers from around the world who had taken part in TFL’s highly selective feature, script and series labs.
New this year was the ComedyLab, which had the interesting idea of matching writer-directors with professional comedians to help bring out the humour in the screenplay. The four writers comedians this year were France’s Tatiana Delaunay, Italy’s Cecilia Gragnani, Canada’s Kate Hammer and the US’ Michael Kunze.
The labs take place over a six- month period and feature two sets of one-week, either in-person or online workshops of around nine projects at a time in various European cities, depending on the local funding partner. With online mentoring in between, the final week is in Turin in the days leading up to the Meeting Event; the producers are invited and the focus turns to the business of pitch training.
The projects are then presented international sales executives, co-producers and broadcasters gathered at the Meeting Event and a round of one-to-one meetings follow.
There are also awards with significant cash prizes chosen by various juries with jurors this year including the British Film Institute’s festival director Kristy Matheson, leading French producer Didar Domehri of Maneki Films, Julien Razafindranaly of Films Boutique, Egyptian filmmaker Nada Riyadh and Holger Stern, editor in chief of ARTE Film & Fiction.
“A real auteur”
Rising Greek writer-director Jacqueline Lentzou was a FeatureLab participant with the script for her second film. A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra. (She had taken part in the ScriptLab with her first feature Moon, 66 Questions which on to premiere in the Encounters strand at the Berlinale in 2021.) Her producer, Annabelle Aronis of Athens-based Avion Film describes Lentzou as a “real auteur who needs to be seen and heard”. Lentzou, who says filmmaking is a calling for her, had to overcome her discomfort with the concept of pitching to deliver one of the most resonant presentations on the day.
A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra opens with the last moments in the (physical) life of a 15 year-old who is accidently shot by a policeman. But her existence goes on. “[The film is] the depiction of the light that is within and never goes out,” says Lentzou.
“We are here to look for co-producers, for funds,” says Aronis, for whom the film is also her first feature after a storied career making commercials. She also worked on Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2011 title Alps.
“When we were applying [for TFL] we though it would be great to get an award but we were mostly applying for visibility and partners.”
The film went on to win a €10,000 partner award from ARRI.
Aronis is banking on support for the €1.5m from the Greek Film Centre (when it reopens for funding in early 2025) and has already brought on board French co-producer Paraiso Production through which the project has applied for funding from the CNC’s Cinema du Monde, and Romania’s MicroFilm.
The FeatureLab took place for a week in Opatjia in Croatia, with the support of Croatian Audiovisual Centre, followed by an online module in September and leading up to the final session in November in Turin.
“There is something very moving when people from different parts of the world come together for a common passion,” says Lentzou of the mood of the workshops.
Quick advance
SeriesLab is the one workshop that involves producers at every stage.
“For TV, this is one of the best labs you can get on,” says Irish producer Maggie Ryan of Dublin’s Escape Pod Media. She attended the SeriesLab workshops in Flanders and then Madrid with writer and co-creator Hiram Harrington and director and co-creator Janna Kemperman. . “We’ve been able to be here as a three from the start,” Ryan explains. “Which has given us an advantage in terms of how quickly we can advance the project.”
Goodnight Girl is about a group of queer friends who are reunited at a funeral for a transgender girl and find out her family are burying her as a man. “It asks the questions, ‘What makes a family? What is a family?’” says Harrington. “It is based on my own experience as a trangender person and having to make a family for myself when my own didn’t immediately understand. They have come around now though.”
Harrington met Kemperman on the set of RTE soap Fair City. “We realised we both liked things a little spicier than network television,” recalls Harrington.
The pair started developing Goodnight Girl as a short film with funding from Irish broadcaster Virgin Media. “Along the way we realised there is so much more to the story, the conversation it creates,” says Kemperman. “[Between] people with more of a traditional view and people with newfound families. They both have power in this story. Grief brings people together and tears people apart. We were interested in developing this idea into a series so I bought it to Maggie.”
With money from RTE and Screen Ireland to develop a pilot, the team applied for TFL.
“We wanted to get it out of own bubble, to talk to other people, get challenged, get questioned,” says Ryan. “It has really opened up our project.”
The time the three have had together at TFL this year has produced a pilot script, a series bible and a pitch document. “It has been a joy” says Ryan.
The team describe the Flanders and Madrid labs as comparable to “writers’ rooms” and say they flourished within the communal nature of them. “It’s so much easier with someone else’s project to see what they have but are not necessarily expressing,” says Ryan
The Goodnight Girl team was in Turin looking for co-producers, a sales agent, distributors and other broadcasters. “It’s in a place when I want to start talking to broadcasters,” says Ryan “We have such a strong pilot, that’s the feedback we keep getting. I want funding before I commission Hiram to write any more. The next step is to move into preproduction.”
Self discovery
For Filipino writer-director Sam Manacsa, attending TFL’s ScriptLab this year has allowed her to make solid, or at least slightly more solid, all the ideas she has in her head. She participated with The Void Is Immense In Idle Hours, her first feature script. Manasca works as a production designer in Manila for commercials and has made several short films.
“My treatment is a series of long wide takes. I imagine it all happening all at once. Although that tends to go missing on paper,” she smiles.
The film follows a 19- year- old woman who works as salesperson and dreams of becoming a singer. Her life takes a turn when she becomes the last person to see a child before he disappears. The mother of the child tries to forge a friendship with her in the hope of finding answers about her missing son.
“I began the project in 2021, in the peak of Covid. having read a lot of articles about the families of the victims of the war on drugs in Philippines. It becomes the backdrop of the film,” says Manacsa. “It’s mostly watching the lives of these people and who they left behind. The process of grieving.”
Although it is Manacsa’s first time as part of TFL, her producers Chad Cabigon and rising Filipino director Carlo Franciso Manatad of the Manila outfit NextLives are regulars and Manatad took part in ScriptLab last year with a project called Brilliant Melody. They attended the Meeting Event to look for co-producers for The Void… Indonesia’s KawanKawan Media is already on board the €1.5m project.
The ScriptLab workshops, first in Berlin and then in Porto, were just for Manacsa. “[The workshops] are a process of self -discovery,” she says. “They helped me to know how to talk about the project, how to approach the topic. It has been very enriching.
“I began the lab with three pages of a treatment and now I am reaching 10.”
Laughing matter
The furthest along of all the scripts and projects being cajoled into life at TFL this year is Honeyjoon, by ComedyLab participant Lilian T. Mehrel, that is now in production in the Azores. This meant the US-based filmmaker was able to pitch the project to the industry attendees in Turin via a recorded video (probably much to the envy of the reluctant live pitcher Lentzou, writer-director of A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra). Her producer Andreia Nunes of Lisbon-based Wonder Maria took part on the ground.
Honeyjoon is a further TFL project that explores how humanity copes – or doesn’t - with grief. A Kurdish-Persian woman and her American daughter, called June, travel to the Azores to deal with a major loss and realise they have very different ideas about the trip, about grief and and also about bikinis.
“Honeyjoon has streaks here and there of comedy,” says Nunes. “Lilian felt it was important to do a lab as it is her first feature as a director. She wanted mentors and peers to work with the project and to give feedback. It was important for her to get the confidence she needed, and specially to get the confidence about the comedy.”
TFL’s ComedyLab came at the perfect moment for Honeyjoon. Following the Berlin workshop in the spring, the project was selected to pitch for the $1m Untold Stories award, sponsored by AT&T, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It won, which came with a requirement to shoot within the year in time to premiere at the June 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
The second week of the ComedyLab in Porto allowed Mehrel to fine-tune the script before she started shooting.
“It’s a very important moment for the project as we are looking for pre-sales as there is a little gap [in the €1.2m budget] to pay for post,: says Nunes of what she wanted to achieved at the Meeting Event.
Honeyjoon is set up as a Portugal-US co-production with Alex C Lo of New York-based Cinema Inutile. “I think of it is as a sexy dramedy,” says Nunes of the film. “It’s a comedy yes, but not only a comedy. It’s a little bit more than that. It celebrates women and women’s bodies.”
Nunes had a second project at TFL Meeting Event: Joel Salgardo’s first feature A Tropical Energy in the ScriptLab which is in early development.
The rising Portuguese producer was also at TFL last year, with ScriptLab project, Ary Zara’s Sun In Saturn. It won the CNC award and is now in active development with Nunes. It was Zara who met Honeyjoon’s Mehrel at the short film festival in Clermont -Ferrand and suggested she apply to TFL’s ComedyLab.
“She asked me about Torino and although the ComedyLab was new I said the ScriptLab had been life changing regarding Sun As Saturn,” Nunes recalls. “The feedback Ary received from everyone, and the award, it was important. We had nothing so it was the first money for the project.
“I said to Lilian, “yes. please apply.”
Applications to TFL’s 2025 labs are now open.
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