2025 Cannes’ La Résidence: Flóra Anna Buda & Constance Tsang Among Half Dozen Selected

The Cannes Film Festival’s La Résidence is welcoming Flóra Anna Buda, Andrea Gatopoulos, Xiwen Cong, Simon Maria Kubiena, Constance Tsang and Rodrigo Ribeyro to their 49th session. From March 15 to July 31, 2025, this next generation of international filmmakers will reside in Paris where they will benefit from a personalized screenwriting residency program and a collective program of meetings with film professionals. Recent filmmakers to benefit from the program include Sofia Alaoui and Asmae El Moudir. The two stand-outs from the half dozen are easily Flóra Anna Buda and Constance Tsang who both made waves in Cannes. Buda won the Palme d’Or for her short film ’27’ and Tsang gave us one of the best directorial debut showcases last year with Blue Sun Palace. Her next is titled My Mother and Yours. Here are the bios:

Flóra Anna Buda was born and raised in Budapest. After studying fashion, her love for drawing and storytelling led her to study animation at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), from which she graduated at the age of 27. Her graduation film, Entopia, premiered at the 69th Berlinale and received the 33rd Teddy Award. Right after graduating, she became an intern at MIYU Productions, where she later made her first professional film in co-production with Boddah. This short film, entitled 27, premiered at the Festival de Cannes and won the Palme d’or, and then the Cristal Award at the Annecy Festival in 2023.

Andrea Gatopoulos is an Italian and Greek director, producer and distributor. A member of EFA, and alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Locarno Spring Academy and TFL, he founded his company Il Varco, the short film distribution Gargantua and the avant-garde cinema residency Nouvelle Bug. He holds a degree in Literature and studied at workshops with Werner Herzog, Radu Jude and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His films deal with virtual realities, uncanny valleys, disillusion, anti-capitalism and critiques of progressivism. Happy New Year, Jim (2022) was the first machinima presented in Cannes, at the Directors’ Fortnight. In 2023 in Locarno, he presented Eschaton Ad, a film about the apocalyptic advent of AI. Later that year he presented his first documentary feature, A Stranger Quest (2023), at the Torino Film Festival. In 2024, his short film The Eggregores’ Theory opened the 39th Venice Film Critics’ Week as the first AI film in Venice.

Xiwen Cong grew up in a county town in Northeast China. She studied film directing at the Beijing Film Academy (BFA). Her short film Banished Love was shown at the 77th Festival de Cannes as a La Cinef selection and at the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival. Xiwen is currently developing her first feature Home, Sick at La Résidence du Festival de Cannes.

Simon Maria Kubiena, born in 1998, is an Austrian writer-director based in Vienna and Berlin. He began studying film directing in 2019 at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, with a semester at La Fémis. In 2023, he started a Master’s degree in screenwriting at the London Film School (LFS). His short film Blue Noise received an award at the 72nd Berlinale, followed by the co-directed short film Mise à nu, which premiered at the 73rd Berlinale. His latest short film At Home I Feel Like Leaving was shown at Premiers Plans d’Angers. Simon is currently developing his first feature film, The Flowering of a Chimera, which explores the journey of a disturbed young man coming to terms with his guilt through a healing, yet unusual, connection with an older man.

Constance Tsang is a Chinese American filmmaker based in New York. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Individualized Study from New York University and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Screenwriting and Directing from Columbia University. Her first feature, Blue Sun Palace, premiered in Semaine de la Critique in Cannes in 2024, where it won the French Touch Prize. Her next feature, My Mother and Yours, is currently in development at La Résidence du Festival de Cannes.

Rodrigo Ribeyro is a filmmaker from São Paulo, Brazil. A graduate of the Academia Internacional de Cinema and of the Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, he wrote and directed several short films and experimental music videos. Cantareira, his first fiction short, received an award from La Cinef Jury at the 74th Festival de Cannes and at the main Brazilian festivals including Brasília Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro ISFF and São Paulo ISFF. The Nature, his most recent short, recently premiered at Festival do Rio. Raised in an environmental reserve located on the fringe of the big city, the Serra da Cantareira, his artistic practice is in connection with the frictions between society, nature and labor. At La Résidence, Rodrigo will be developing his first feature film project.