Close by Lukas Dhont, Akelarre by Pablo Agüero, A Tale of Love and Desire by Leyla Bouzid, Skies of Lebanon by Chloé Mazlo, Agnus Dei by Anne Fontaine and Divines by Houda Benyamina are just a few of the films to have come to us via the Annual Selection writing residency organised by Le Groupe Ouest, who are the leaders in their field in Europe and who have just unveiled the lucky few to grace their 2023 selection.

Out of 250 submissions, eight projects (carried by eleven authors) have been selected for this latest residency, which will last a total of nine months (split across four sessions) and is set to be steered by a team of consultants including Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Leyla Bouzid, Delphine Gleize and Marcel Beaulieu; projects which range from out-and-out genre films to works treading the line between fiction and documentary, offering up an overhaul of animated film codes, an analysis of the disappearance of all things sacred, an exploration of prison breakouts under a dictatorship, an invitation to love one another differently, an observation of the past in order to understand the present, and a journey elsewhere, to the far end of a beach…

This 2023 selection namely includes three second feature film projects: Dahomey by French-Moroccan director Yasmine Benkiran (revealed in last year’s Venetian Critics’ Week via Queens), Cargo culte by Dominique Rocher (who turned heads in Rotterdam in 2018 via The Night Eats the World), co-written by Éric Forestier, and Shana by Lila Pinell, who spent time in Cannes’ ACID line-up in 2017 via Kiss and Cry (co-directed by Chloé Mahieu) and who also scooped the Jean Vigo Prize and the Clermont-Ferrand Grand Prize in 2021 thanks to her short film Le roi David.

The other five projects selected this year are all debut feature films, of which one is an animation: La perle des fumerolles by Paul Cabon, who caused a stir with his four short films (Le futur sera chauve and Nettle Head, which were nominated for the 2018 and 2021 Best Animated Short Film Césars, Storm Hits Jacket, which bagged a Jury Prize in Sundance 2015, and Sauvage which scooped a Special Jury Prize in Annecy’s graduate films competition in 2010).

Awarded the 2022 César for Best Short Film on account of One and Thousand Nights, Elie Girard has also been selected via Hôtel amour, a project he’s currently developing with Films Grand Huit, while La novice by Saskia Waledisch, Fog by Denis Spiridonov (the Russian filmmaker living in France) and L’enfant Doré by Joffrey Monteiro-Noël and Raphaël Thet (who co-wrote the film with Raphaël Thet) are set to round off this year’s Annual Selection.