The folks at ScreenDaily have unveiled the 10 projects (nine fiction/one docu) selected for the 2024 FeatureLab training programme (for debut and sophomore projects in the development stage) and among the names we can the likes of Jacqueline Lentzou, André Hayato Saito and Ashmita Guha Neogi — all filmmakers who’ve presented in Cannes. Moon, 66 Questions‘ filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou brings her sophomore project in A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra to the lab. That feature centers around a protagonist slightly a bit younger than in her feature debut. We have India’s Ashmita Guha Neogi – who shored up in Cannes with her Cinefondation-winning short. Like Lentzou’s project, Cold Ashes Can Cause Forest Fire also features a young character. Japanese-Brazilian filmmaker André Hayato Saito (who competes for the short Palme d’Or next month in Cannes) is working on Yellow Chrysanthemum – also about a Japanese-Brazilian teenager living on the border between two worlds. The amazing lab runs from June until November 2024, with a one week-long residential module in Opatjia (Croatia), with the support of Croatian Audiovisual Centre, followed by the online module (in September) and leading up to the final session in November in Turin. Here are the ten projects:
A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra (Gr)
Dir-scr: Jacqueline Lentzou
Prod: Annabelle Aronis for Avion Films
Jo, a 15-year-old tomboy, has a nightmare made of fog and aurora light: her dog is lost, her voice cannot be heard, and her surroundings seem completely unfamiliar. Has the tone of the day been set yet?
Antonivka (Ukr)
Dir-scr: Kateryna Gornostai
Prod: Viktoriia Khomenko for Moon Man
The future: postwar Ukraine. A young couple, Aurora and Darko, move to the house of her grandfather who survived village occupation alone and is recovering from a mild stroke. New life begins, but death is still present.
Cold Ashes Can Cause Forest Fires (India-Fr)
Dir-scr: Ashmita Guha Neogi
Prod: Avantika Singh Desbouvries for Salt for Sugar Films
The sudden departure of her mother opens up a deep chasm between a 13-year-old girl and her father who manages a hotel in a small mountain town in the Himalayas.
Hard Sub (Azer-Ger)
Dir-scr: Novruz Hikmet
Prod: Julian Gerchow for plotlessfilm
Anticipating war, Amir’s ex-wife is taking their daughter to Europe. Now he is forced to a quick decision: should he stay, go back to his motherland, or become an immigrant all over again.
La Notte Brucia (It)
Dir-scr: Angelica Gallo
Prod: Andrea Gori for Lumen Films
Massimo and his friends live in the suburbs of Rome. They have a dangerous hobby: stealing from rich young people in discos – but one night something goes wrong.
The Boy And The Fight Of The Spiders (Phil-Fr)
Dir-scr: Jarell Mahinay Serencio
Co-writer: Homer B. Novicio
Prod: Claire Lajoumard for Acrobates Films
In Southern Philippines, a carefree, spider-obsessed young boy loses his older brother and father in a mine’s collapse. Forced to look for their bodies in the rubble, he digs up a web of lies woven together by the powers-that-be.
Sea, Star, Woman (S.Kor-UK-Fr)
Dir-scr: Jeunghae Yim
Prod: Helen Olive for 5 à 7 Films
All I have of my mother are photos with holes cut out of them where her face had been. After thirty years of amnesia, my wandering gaze will take us on a journey across three continents and my complex family’s relationships…searching for traces of my mother.
Spadčyna – Legacy (Belarus-Ger)
Dir-scr: Aliaksei Paluyan
Prod: Paulina Toenne for Tamtam Film
Minsk 2020: “25 years of Lukashenka is enough” echoes through the streets and paints the walls of Belarus. A father, mother, son and daughter find themselves at opposite ends of a systemic power struggle that dates back to the Soviet era.
Versorgen (Switz)
Dir-scr: Nora Longatti
Prod: Chanta Schiner for Seeland Filmproduktion
Versorgen immerses us into the choreographed realm of care work through everyday encounters between human bodies, architectures and machines.
Yellow Chrysanthemum (Braz)
Dir-scr: André Hayato Saito
Prod: Mayra Faour Auad for MyMama Entertainment
Amidst the festivities of the 1998 World Cup, Erika, a Japanese-Brazilian teenager living on the border between two worlds, faces the prejudices linked to her identity and struggles with unresolved grief over her best friend’s disappearance when she was seven.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
