Eight international filmmakers whose short films have been previously selected for Cannes’ Critics’ Week are participating in the 11th Critics’ Week’s Next Step programme (December 8 – 13) to help them prep their first features.
Two French directors are attending with comedies: Mathilde Chavanne’s A La Recherche Du Miraculeux, produced by Haut et Court, is about a theatre director working with secondary school students; while Guil Sela’s “anti-romantic” comedy Life Is A Beach about a shy lifeguard trying to fit in.
Polish writer-director David Bodzak is attending with his coming-of-age horror drama Episode about a VHS-obsessed skateboarding high schooler who starts to lose control of his body and mind. It is being produced by Lava Films.
Ethiopian director Beza Hailu Lemma is working on The Last Tears Of The Deceased about a priest grappling with doubts about his own faith, and Filipino filmmaker Arvin Belarmino’s Ria is an ensemble film set in a young punk community in Manila.
Brazil’s Valentina Homem is developing Under The Baobab Tree, a docu-fiction road movie through Mozambique about her anthropologist parents during the 1975 socialist revolution.
Portuguese-born, Hong Kong-based Isadora Neves Marques is at Next Step to hone DNA At The Speed of Light about a filmmaker grappling with her own complicated family dynamics and a new message from an alien planet to Earth.
The filmmakers are mentored by international consultants including directors Elene Naveriani and Julie Lecoustre, screenwriters Yacine Badday and Phillippe Barrière, and producer Marie Dubas, as well as composers including Harry Allouche, Léonie Flore, and Yan Wagner.
The €2,500 Next Step Hildegarde Award will be presented at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025. Another project will be offered a three-week-long residency at the Moulin d’Andé-CECI.
The first part is taking place in Normandy, to be followed by a networking event in Paris.
The filmmakers are sequestered in a 12th century mill in Normandy in the middle of the winter,” says Next Step director Thomas Rosso.
“They’re not just there to sell their projects. We really try to push them to a collective experience and create a real community.”
Films to have passed through the Next Step programme that made waves at 2024 festivals include Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language that is Canada’s selection for a best international feature Oscar, Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall, and Johanna Pyykkö’s My Wonderful Stranger.
They are among 39 completed feature films and seven in production with the Next Step stamp.
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