Cannes’ Critics Week has expanded its shorts-to-features Next Step programme with inaugural workshop Next Step Volume II that runs September 25-30 in the Corsican mountains.
The new initiative brings together five international filmmakers with feature films in development and three composers for what organisers call “the vital stage of script rewriting”.
The selected directors and composers will spend a week at the Northern Corsican creative hub founded by filmmaker Antoine Viviani to hone their scripts and integrate a score with the help of international experts and consultants. Spearheaded by Next Step director Thomas Rosso, the programme is an extension of the decade-old Critics Week programme designed to help short film directors make the leap between short and feature films by offering them a boost to launch their films into the global film market.
This year’s Next Step Volume II participating filmmakers include Spanish, US-based writer-director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias who brings her first feature Forastera; American writer-director-photographer Sam Kuhn with Southern France-set In Blue from US production house 2AM and France’s Solab Films; Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani with Greek-French-Spanish-German-Romanian-Japanese co-production Titanic Ocean; Brazilian director Joao Paulo Miranda Maria with his Amazon-set second feature Bandeira; and Egyptian writer-director Nada Riyadh with Moonblind.
Composers include Rémi Boubal (Cesar Diaz’s 2019 Camera d’Or-winning Nuestras Madres), Pierre Desprats (Andrés Ramírez Pulido’s Critics’ Week Grand Prize-winning La Jauría), and Delphine Malaussena (Shane Atkinson’s Deauville Grand Prize-winning LaRoy.)
“We’ve wanted to extend the Next Step experience for a long time now, always with the aim of keeping in touch with filmmakers who have passed through Critics’ Week and continuing to support them beyond Cannes by nourishing this small ‘community’ with the experiences of each one of them,” Rosso told Screen, adding that the aim of the residency is “to encourage encounters and spark inspiration. The projects are at different stages of development, and this diversity enriches the exchanges.”
The initiative is supported by artists’ rights organisation SACEM and in partnership with agri/cultural hub Providenza,
2023 festivals have been peppered with former Next Step participants including Un Certain Regard prize-winner Molly Manning Walker who won the Next Step prize in 2021 for How to Have Sex and Laura Ferres’ Locarno 2023 competitor The Permanent Picture and Moin Hussain’s 2023 Venice Critics’ Week pick Sky Peals.
Next Step’s 10th edition will be held from December 9-15 at the Moulin d’Ande in Paris.
Other Next Step spin-off initiatives like Volume II are also on the table for future editions. “We’re developing slowly, but surely,” Rosso confirms.
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