The four international filmmakers and three composers selected for the second edition of Next Step II - the programme initiated last year by Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week to complete the original Next Step initiative introduced in 2014 to support talented directors make the leap from short film to feature film (read our news on the 2024 results) - are now in the home stretch of the workshop-residency taking place in the Haute-Corse region.

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Dedicated to re-writing screenplays and film music creation, Next Step II (whose 2024 edition is unspooling 11 – 18 September) is organised with the support of Sacem and the CNC in partnership with the agricultural/cultural initiative Providenza.

The filmmakers selected for this year’s edition are Lilla Halla, Moin Hussain, Gitanjali Rao and Jacqueline Lenzou, flanked by composer Carla Pallone and her colleagues Romain Allender and Pierre Oberkampf, with several screenwriting and musical consultants likewise involved (Clara Roquet, Emma Benestan and Guillaume Bréaud in the first instance and composer Audrey Ismaël and musical supervisor Etienne Tricard in the latter).

The selected projects are as follows:

Golden Balls - Lilla Halla
Production: Chromosom Films (Germany)
After Power Alley [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Lillah Halla
scheda film] (Critics’ Week 2023), Brazilian director Lilla Halla is now writing her second feature film, a dark musical comedy which tells the story of Krista Bomb, an octogenarian ex-con man-hater who cross-dresses as an alpha-male to save her needy, pony-playing middle-aged son from the absurdities of a masculinist cult. A surrealist satire where humour becomes the only way to subvert squareness.

Burma - Moin Hussain
Production: The Fold (UK)
Revealed by way of Sky Peals [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Moin Hussain
scheda film] in Venice’s International Critics’ Week 2023, British-Pakistani filmmaker Moin Hussain is currently polishing off her second feature film. It revolves around a small band of soldiers who are retreating to India during the Japanese invasion of Burma and a young Indian soldier among them who begins to question the guidance of the charismatic British captain leading them through the jungle.

A Life In The Day of Jo: Chapter Phaedra - Jacqueline Lentzou
Production: Avion Films (Greece), Paraiso Production (France), MicroFILM (Romania)
Following on from Moon, 66 Questions [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jacqueline Lentzou
scheda film] (screened in the Berlinale Encounters line-up in 2021), Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou is now preparing a movie revolving around Jo, a cool 15-year-old kid who wakes up from a cosmic dream and sets off for a high-school day that will change everything. Rebelling against her parents and obsessed with her classmate Pheadra who has an angelic voice, she decides to skip classes and hang out on the streets of Athens with her group of friends. But they subsequently  find themselves confronted by the police.

Lost Animals - Gitanjali Rao
Production: Singing Owl Films (India), House On Fire (France)
Highly acclaimed for her debut feature film, the animation Bombay Rose [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] (discovered in 2019 in Venice’s International Critics’ Week), Indian director Gitanjali Rao is currently working on Lost Animals. The story follows Naseer who runs an antiques shop. One day, he enters into a 100-year-old painting and discovers, as he makes his way through the animated background, the life of an artist named Aranyaniqui, who brings lost animals to life in her oil paintings.

For the record, out of the five filmmakers who took part in last year’s Next Step II, two have now wrapped filming on their movies (which we’ll get to discover next year): Spanish director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias with Forastera and Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani with Titanic Ocean.