It’s nearly impossible to predict what the programming crew led by Artistic Director Julien Rejl will cook up for year four, but if the previous editions are any guide, they’ll once again champion films flying low under the radar—or completely off the grid. The section has quietly become a launchpad for striking debut features, a reputation sealed by two Caméra d’Or wins: Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell in 2023 (watch) and The President’s Cake (watch) in 2025.
Last year, the JW Marriott Cannes hosted a lineup that included YES from Nadav Lapid, Kokuho by Lee Sang-il, The Girl in the Snow from Louise Hémon, and an international premiere slot for Sorry, Baby by Eva Victor. The slate usually hovers around the twenty-film mark—19 titles in 2023, 21 in 2024, and back to 19 last year. Yesterday, we took a peak at what the Critics’ Week could look like, and here we’ve pulled together 27 potential contenders we think would slide perfectly into the section’s adventurous, discovery-driven groove with very little need to glitz or prestige.
A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra
Jacqueline Lentzou
Producers: Avion Films Avion Films’ Annabelle Aronis & Loli Antzoulatou, 4 a 4 Productions’ Andrea Queralt
World Sales: TBD.
Stringing together support beginning in 2023 with the Ventura Labs, then 2024’s Torino FilmLab, Critic’s Week Next Step and more recently Les Arcs, Greek filmmaker Jacqueline Lentzou will very likely shore up somewhere on the Croisette. She broke out with Berlinale selected 66 Questions (2021) and while we don’t have specifics on when this was shot or who lines up the sophomore feature, Lentzou is looking at youth culture again with A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra in a film project that appears to be themes of longing, identity and emotional volatility.
JO, wild, melancholic and only 15, has a cosmic dream. Superbly quiet yet bathed in visual music, a dream whose details and nuances will be mysteriously reappearing as the day proceeds, even if Jo won’t notice. Indeed, her attention is elsewhere, on the choir auditions which she cannot miss, hence the fight with her moody mom, Eleni, who denies driving her to school, claiming she has no car – although she.
Awaiting Birds
Sofia Quirós
Producers: Sputnik Films’ Mariana Murillo Quesada, Murillo Cine’s Cecilia Salim
World Sales: TBD.
Receiving a healthy dose of support from the folks in the Critics’ Week having programmed her 2017 short Selva and her feature debut Land of Ashes (2019), Costa Rican filmmaker Sofia Quirós began production on her sophomore feature back in April of last year. Re-teaming with her cinematographer Francisca Saéz Agurto, Awaiting Birds appears to be working with themes of emotional attachment, childhood coping and transformation.
Madre Pájaro sees seven-year old Oliver lives with his older siblings in an arid coastal town in northern Costa Rica. While his parents are temporarily in the capital receiving treatment for his mother’s cancer, Oliver develops a strong friendship with Paloma (28), a neighbor in whom he projects the fantasy of a new mother. With his parents’ return, Oliver will confront his mother’s illness firsthand and the rejection he feels towards her, but his relationship with Paloma and his connection with birds will help him find his own way to say goodbye.
Brace Your Heart
Amanda Kernell
Producers: Nordisk Film Production Sweden’s Eva Åkergren
World Sales: TrustNordisk
Both a Sundance and Venice patron with her 2015 short ‘Northern Great Mountain’ and sophomore feature Charter (read review) premiering in Park City and her debut feature Sami Blood (read review) being presented at the 2016 Venice Film Festival, Swedish filmmaker Amanda Kernell‘s third trip behind the camera took place in May of last year. Working with non-actors Elli Sara Valkeapää, Vincent Niia and Andte Gaup-Juuso, Brace Your Heart looks to be a tale about tradition, personal autonomy, love and power.
In a remote Sámi village high in the mountains, 20-year-old Ejva inherits her late father’s reindeer herd. As she struggles to keep the herd thriving, local leader Heaika develops romantic feelings for her, and though hesitant, she feels compelled to accept. But everything changes when Nejla, Heaika’s cousin, arrives, and Ejva discovers true love for the first time. Betrayed and jealous, Heaika reacts harshly, leaving Ejva with a condition that makes her hands shake uncontrollably, threatening her ability to care for the herd. Now, Ejva must find a way to reclaim control over her life and her future.
La chaleur
Stéphane Demoustier
Producers: Jean des Forêts, Amélie Jacquis, Sonia Rovai, André Logié, Matthias Erny
World Sales: Charades
Witnessing his last picture land in the Un Certain Regard section at last year’s edition, The Great Arch filmmaker Stéphane Demoustier will likely be considering different Croisette invite options. For his fifth feature (filmed in August of last year), the filmmaker enlisted Hadrien Hussein, Martina La Manna, Tristan Richard, Noé Houssard and Zakariya Gouram for this book to screen adaptation that is based on a poem by Victor Hugo. Demoustier re-teams with his cinematographer David Chambille for La chaleur an under the sun thriller that enters a garden of moral paralysis and guilt, adolescence and psychological pressures.
It’s the end of summer for seventeen-year-old Marouane, a quiet and reserved teen who has spent two weeks at a seaside campsite with his family. On the eve of departure, a sudden heat wave rolls in. People celebrate, grow restless, tempers flare, and off to the side, a clash between Marouane and another teen spirals into a deadly incident. Consumed by panic, he hides the body and pretends nothing happened. As his final moments at the campsite stretch endlessly, the net slowly closes in on him. Unable to see a way out, and even while he feels a spark with the magnetic Giulia, his thoughts keep drifting to just one thing: going home.
Circles
Michel Franco
Producers: Franco, Eyal Shiray, Alexander Rodnyansky.
World Sales: TBD.
Another under-the-radar project that shot at the beginning of 2025, enfant terrible Michel Franco was once a regular in Cannes but he hasn’t been featured there since 2017’s April’s Daughter. With Circles, we believe that the Mexican auteur will circle back to his roots – his 2009 debut Daniel & Ana was selected in the section and we also believe this might follow the too out to touch premiere narrative of last year’s Nadav Lapid’s YES. Shot in black&white and in the 1,66:1 format alongside his regular cinematographer Yves Cape, this stars Itamar Tenenbaum, Maya Pinchasi and Kais Nashif.
Set in the early 1950s, during the formative years of the State of Israel. It tells the story of siblings Meir and Shoshana Har Zion, and their deep connection amid the cycle of violence between Arabs and Jews. Meir Har Zion would go on to become a legendary and controversial figure. In the eyes of many, the greatest IDF fighter; to others, a man whose problematic moral outlook raised troubling questions.
Demande à la montagne
Pierre Menahem
Producers: Barberousse Films’ Mathile Delaunay
World Sales: TBD
An established film producer and director – his 2022 short Le feu du lac was in competition for the Palme d’Or short, this personality has a distinct taste in cinema backing the likes of Feathers (2021), Tiger Stripes (2024) and I Only Rest in the Storm (2025). Pierre Menahem moved behind the camera for his feature debut this past June in France. Casting Julien De Saint-Jean, Pierre-Yves Cardinal and Emmanuelle Béart, Demande à la montagne (aka Et après) will likely be considered by the other sections along the Croisette.
Co-written with Jihane Chouaib, this focuses on Mathieu who heads for the mountain during a night of insomnia. He walks as fast and as high as he can until exhaustion. The next day, Felix, a peasant, reports his disappearance to the police. Mathieu’s mother arrives in the valley to try and speed up the search, in vain. Felix remembers his first encounter with Mathieu, a few months prior – a story of love and sex from which no one will emerge unscathed…
Dentro
Elsa Amiel
Producers: Eugénie Michel-Villette, Lionel Baier
World Sales: TBD.
Cutting her teeth as a first assistant director for the likes of Bertrand Bonello and Mathieu Amalric, Elsa Amiel saw her her debut feature Pearl premiere in the Giornata degli autori section at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. She stays in feature film but moves into the docu realm with Il cattivo è cattivo, il buono è buono aka Dentro.
A high-security prison in Tuscany. Long sentences. Among the inmates is a free man, Armando Punzo, who decided to lock himself up there thirty-five years ago. Punzo or how, through art and thought, to heal the being.
The Devil’s Well
Jairo Boisier Olave
Producers: Cangrejo Films’ Diego Pino Anguita
World Sales: TBD.
Working with themes of the transition from childhood to adulthood, corruption, plus family dependence across generations, Jairo Boisier Olave finally moved into his sophomore feature in native Chile and Argentina in April of last year. His films have been shown at Clermont-Ferrand, and his feature debut in 2011’s La Jubilada was showcased at Rotterdam. Formerly known as Radiesthesia, The Devil’s Well (Los pozos del diablo) was selected to participate at the Cannes’ Cinéfondation Résidence all the way back in 2012 and more recently, is has been supported by Proyecta Ventana Sur and will participate in Doha Film Institute’s Qumra (online) event this month.
Written by Olave and René Ballesteros, during a severe drought, Judith (15) roams the valleys of San Marcelo searching for water. She possesses a mysterious ability to detect underground flows. Using this gift, she helps her father, Óscar (50), distribute water throughout the town in their tanker truck. One day, a strange force draws her to an old dry well, where she senses a presence buried below. As Judith investigates, she becomes aware of a local network organised to hoard water resources for the benefit of a powerful avocado plantation….
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Radu Jude
Producers: SBS Productions’ Saïd Ben Saïd
World Sales: TBD.
More of a presence at the Berlinale and Locarno, having showcased a trio of short films in the Quinzaine section, perhaps its time for Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude to launch a feature film here especially with French prod coin and the talent involved. Ana Dumitrascu, Vincent Macaigne, Mélanie Thierry and Louve Proust toplined the project which filmed last September and knowing that he has quick hands between features and shorts it’s not impossible for The Diary of a Chambermaid to make it for the May finish line. Note: Jude has presented three short films in the Quinzaine.
This begins in the wake of a young Romanian woman who has travelled to France to work for a French family and who also joins an amateur theatre company who are working on an adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid.
The Difficult Bride
Rubaiyat Hossain
Producers: Les Films de l’Après-Midi’s François D’Artemare
World Sales: TBD.
A fourth feature (two decades in the works) coined as a feminist supernatural drama, Bangladeshi filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain (her last feature Made in Bangladesh was selected for 2019’s TIFF) might make waves with The Difficult Bride. Having received support dating back to 2022’s Berlinale Co-Production Market, World Cinema Fund, Eurimages Fund and more recently Les Arcs Film Festival’s Work-in-Progress program and Prada Foundation, this is toplined by Rikita Nondine Shimu and Azmeri Haque Badhon. Production took place in late 2025 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
In Dhaka, Zaineen prepares for her wedding following beauty rituals and family expectations. However, her body reacts in an unexpected and disturbing way. Amongst home remedies, social pressures, and haunting visions, the path to marriage becomes a physical and psychological struggle against what is imposed on her, until her body itself seems to take its own direction.
Fuxi: Joy In Four Chapters
Qiu Jiongjiong
Producers: Ding Ningyuan, Zhao Jin, David Tang
World Sales: TBD.
A Chinese artist and filmmaker based in Shenzhen, after a quartet of docu features Qiu Jiongjiong moved into fiction with A New Old Play (2021) — his first fiction feature was selected for the Locarno comp where it won a Special Jury Prize. Fuxi: Joy In Four Chapters moved into production in October of 2024 with the likes of Tsai Ming-liang darling Lee Kang-sheng, plus Lee Hong-chi, Annie Chen, Darran Wang and Fan Kuang-yao. The four part drama fantasy that spans four millennia recently received coin from the Doha Film Institute.
On a seesaw, Sun and Moon rise and fall, witnessing four bizarre tales in Sichuan: from prehistoric ancestors born with tails, to a mythic king fated to become a cuckoo; from a legendary medieval poet-politician in exile, to a homeless child on the eve of modern revolution. Through four feasts and festivities spanning four millennia, the living and the dead, gods and ghosts, unite to relish everyday culinary joys.
Happy End
Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq / Vladimir Mavounia Kouka
Producers: TBD.
World Sales: mk2 Films
When she is not working as a script consultant or screenwriter, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq has been hitting the Croisette bullseye first in 2014 with her Camera d’Or/Un Certain Regard ensemble prize winning Party Girl (in collaboration with Samuel Theis and Claire Burger) and she made hearts melt with solo debut in Àma Gloria which opened the Critics’ Week section in 2023. This new animated project sees her team with her I Want Pluto to Be a Planet Again partner Vladimir Mavounia Kouka – and as the case with anything that is animated it’s difficult to zero in on when a project might be finished or for that matter even started.
Happy End follows Bertha King, a suicidal career soldier who has the bad to luck to finally end things right as the grim reaper hangs up his scythe. Left yearning to die while death has gone on strike, the depressed hero must navigate a morose new existence all of sudden freed from the bonds of mortality.
Chris Nash
Producers: Peter Kuplowsky, Shannon Hanmer
World Sales: Charades
In 2024, Chris Nash introduced the horror POV in the jarring and spine-chilling In a Violent Nature to unsuspecting Sundance auds. In my books it got the instant auteur cred and if In a Violent Nature 2 finds itself along the same creative instincts then the section that showcased Dangerous Animals last year might splatter the screen with some original kills from this sequel. Production took place in September of last year in Canada with a cast that includes Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic and Lauren-Marie Taylor. IFC Films & Shudder joined the project early.
This follows Johnny, a vengeful, undead killer who embarks on a bloody rampage after a group of teens steal a golden locket that awakened his spirit.
Jupiter
Alexandre Smia
Producers: Chi-Fou-Mi Productions’ Nicolas Dumont and Hugo Sélignac
World Sales: SND Sales.
13 jours, 13 nuits scribe Alexandre Smia moved into the director’s chair this past June in Paris on a project that (especially with where the world’s affairs are at) feels perhaps too close to home. Jupiter features Denis Ménochet, André Dussollier, Reda Kateb, Ella Rumpf, Dominique Blanc and Céline Sallette.
Written by Alexandre Smia and Thomas Finkelkraut, the title refers to the underground bunker located under Paris’ Élysée Palace where the French government convenes to deal with international crises. Denis Menochet plays the newly elected French president, who enters crisis discussions with his political and military advisors following an assassination attempt on Russia’s president as the threat of nuclear war looms.
Man vs. Flock
Tamara Kotevska
Producers: Video Studio Petkovski’s Jordanco Petkovski
World Sales: TBD.
Having presented her work to the world with the widely acclaimed Honeyland in 2019 and The Tale of Silyan in 2025, North Macedonian filmmaker Tamara Kotevska moved into the fiction terrain with Man vs. Flock. Casting Kiril Andonovski, Verica Nedeska, Lola Trendafilović and Goran Bogdan, production took place in July of last year and by the time December hit the North Macedonia, Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Turkey and Montenegro co-production landed work-in-progress prizing at Les Arcs Film Festival’s Industry Village.
The construction of a new highway disrupts the peace of a small village and brings tradition into conflict with modernization. The story centres on an elderly farmer, who finds himself fighting for his land against a Chinese construction company, with the conflict soon extending to his own family. An unexpected twist comes when a social media influencer crash-lands on his property and becomes his unlikely ally.
The Meltdown
Manuela Martelli
Producers: Wood Producciones’ Alejandra García
World Sales: Losange Films.
With over a dozen acting credits—having started as a teenager—including notable collaborations with Sebastián Lelio, Martín Rejtman, and Andrés Wood on Machuca (which premiered at the 2005 Directors’ Fortnight), Chilean filmmaker Manuela Martelli returned to Cannes to world-premiere her feature debut 1976 in 2022, following her early short films Apnea (2014) and Land Tides (2015), both of which also premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight. A return to the same section could indeed be in the cards. Slowly mounting the project since 2022’s Ventana Sur and 2023’s Torino Film Lab, production on The Meltdown would have taken place in late 2024 with thesps Maya O’Rourke, Saskia Rosendahl and Maia Rae Domagala.
Set in 1992, in post-dictatorship Chile, “The Meltdown” is a mystery drama that opens at a remote hotel near an Andean ski resort where nine-year old Inés befriends Hanna, a 15-year old German skier, while staying with her grandparents. When Hanna vanishes without a trace, the search for her begins to uncover hidden truths.
Julia Loktev
Producer: Julia Loktev
Mubi
If the proposed sequel to My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow (will probably clock in around the double feature in length mark) were to premiere anywhere along the Croisette we could see being housed in the Quinzaine section. Julia Loktev first cut her teeth docu-style on 1998’s Moment of Impact (a Sundance winner), and her feature debut in 2006’s Day Night Day Night was showcased in the Directors’ Fortnight section to be followed up with 2011’s The Loneliest Planet (which was showcased at Locarno, TIFF and Rotterdam). Part I of Loktev’s opus premiered at 2024’s NYFF, and landed several award wins including Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature including 2025 Indie Film Site Network Advocate Award. In January the folks at Mubi landed the rights to both films and while there’s no official synopsis, the title speaks for itself.
Nightsong
Maya Da-Rin
Producers: Tamanduá Vermelho’s Maya Da-Rin and Sabrina Garcia, Still Moving’s Juliette Lepoutre
World Sales: TBD.
Brazilian filmmaker Maya Da-Rin feature fiction debut The Fever was selected as Cinéfondation residency before launching at the Locarno Film Festival in 2019 (it won the Golden Leopard for Best Actor and a FIPRESCI award), and soon after she began mounting Nightsong – a sophomore project which works with themes of environmental devastation, colonial legacy, connection and resistance. With recent backing from the TorinoFilmLab, IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund and an exclusive mentorship with Lucrécia Martel, we are definitely close to the finish line with this one.
When the machines stop and the workers return to their homes, a strange stillness hangs over the plantation. No insects can be noticed, just the slight rustling of the wind against the foliage. 7 year-old Helena lives with her parents; workers on a large soy farm in southern Brazil. She suffers from sleepwalking and since her mother is diagnosed with cancer, she becomes close to Poñy – an AváGuarani indigenous woman who lives alone in the vicinity.
Nouveau monde
Margaux Elouagari
Producers: Les Quatre Cents Films’s Hannah Taïeb
World Sales: Paradise City
After a pair of Clermont-Ferrand premiered shorts with 2021’s La Ducasse, and Princesses, Margaux Elouagari moved onto her feature film debut last June in her native France. Proposing an intimate portrait and composed of non-professional actors, she worked alongside cinematographer Elio Balézeaux (who shot Louise Courvoisier’s Holy Cow).
Nouveau monde revolves around ten-year-old boy Soso, living alone with his grandmother Monique, who is wallowing in debt. When the neighbourhood’s principal drug runner is forced into hiding, Soso tries to get closer to the trafficker’s lonely mother, Nadia, in order to get his hands on the money left behind by her son.
Objet A
Ann Oren
Producers: Schuldenberg Films’ Sophie Ahrens, Fabian Altenried and Kristof Gerega, Tarantula’s Donato Rotunno and asterisk’s Vicky Miha
World Sales: TBD.
Berlin-based visual artist Ann Oren leveraged about a decade’s worth of work in the short-form, documentary and experimental cinema into her audacious debut, Piaffe, a 2022 Locarno Film Festival comp title. Her new project, Objet A, began taking shape in 2023, with production taking place in Germany and Luxembourg in June 2025 with players Simone Bucio, Louis Hofmann, Aenne Schwarz, and Georg Friedrich. Juan Sarmiento G. is the cinematographer here.
Ingeborg and Adam are partners in life and at work. They are visionary hand surgeons who love being in control. She loves stealing objects, whereas he wants nothing more than to be her object. After an accident, she is forced to slow down and accept the help of a young, enigmatic woman named Gaia. As Ingeborg develops new obsessions, Adam begins searching for his own object of desire.
Pirates
Myriam Gharbi
Producers: Georges Films’ Georges Films
World Sales: TBD.
More than a decade ago, Myriam Gharbi presented her first and only short 4 Avril 1968 in the Directors’ Fortnight section of 2014. In preparation mode for some time now, Pirates finally moved into production back in May of last year in Marseille and Greece with Ossem, Hugo Becker and Otomo de Manuel toplining a project that is semi-autobiographical in nature drawing from Gharbi’s experiences as a teenager.
Written by Gharbi and Jamal Belmahi, this centres on twenty-something Loubna, rejected by her family when she is released from jail. Consumed by rage and destitute, she sees no way out. But everything changes when she witnesses a demonstration by two activists, Ben and Z, aimed at helping those in need. Intrigued and fascinated by their energy, she decides to follow them. A dive into the unknown that will change her life and challenge her certainties.
Raccoon
Michael Basta
Producers: David Entin, Derrick Eppich, Joseph Fiorillo
World Sales: TBD.
Part of the extended family of American indie filmmakers working part of the Omnes Films collective working on Directors’ Fortnight profiled films in Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point as a first assistant camera, and as a scribe on Carson Lund’s Eephus, programmers might want more from this faction with Raccoon. Michael Basta enlisted Tim Heidecker for a project that we believe would have moved into production sometime in October of 2025.
Bernard Wayland is an ad salesman bumbling through dive bars and strip malls in search of forbidden pleasures during a three-day dental convention
Sevda
Ufuk Emiroglu
Producers: Nadia Turincev, Omar El Kadi, Nicolas Wadimoff, Ketsia Stocker, Philippe Coeytaux
World Sales: TBD.
Swiss-based, Turkish filmmaker Ufuk Emiroglu‘s first foray into feature films began with 2013’s My Father, the Revolution and Me which was featured at the Locarno Film Festival. Supported by Eurimages, her sophomore feature was shot with cinematographer Florent Herry with thesps Tülin Özen and Mert Firat toplining. Production on Sevda would have taken place in March of last year.
Sevda is a real estate developer driving Istanbul’s rapid gentrification. As she prepares to evict the keeper of an old Ottoman cemetery, her past resurfaces, forcing her to confront her story, and her city, from a new perspective.
Tear Gas
Uta Beria
Producers: 1991 Prods.’ Nino Chichua and Anna Khazaradze
World Sales: Indie Sales.
Working with coming-of-age genre amid political turmoil and of course the uncertainty about the future, Tear Gas was inspired by real events that took place at protests in Tbilisi in 2019. Gaining major promo traction when it was among the exclusive projects for the 2024 Cannes Investors Circle initiative, Georgia filmmaker Uta Beria directed several short films and commercials and his debut feature was 2019’s Negative Numbers which also looked at youth culture via a juvenile detention center in Tbilisi.
A love story in the midst of popular uprisings. Elena and Andro meet among thousands of demonstrators. They want to stay together, but they are carried by the more and more violent demonstration…
Un peu avant minuit
Nicolas Pariser
Producers: Bizibi’s Emmanuel Agneray, Dimanche Soir’s Audrey Guatelli
World Sales: Pyramide
It might be a little bit of a rush to get this to the finish line, having filmed in September in the Paris and Italy backdrop, the name of Nicolas Pariser has been welcomed to this parallel section on two occasions premiering Alice and the Mayor in 2019 and The Green Perfume in 2022. His feature debut The Great Game was a Locarno 2015 selection and it went onto win the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film. Lassoing the likes of Melvil Poupaud, Léonie Simaga, Chiara Mastroianni, Golshifteh Farahani, Clara Pacini and Anaïs Demoustier, Un peu avant minuit looks towards themes of the past, family relationships and emotional accountability.
This centres on Léo, aged 49. Just as he is about to separate from his partner, with whom he lives in Nancy, he learns of the death of his biological father, whom he never knew. Needing to take a train to Italy to settle his father’s estate, he spends a few days in Paris to take a look at his life. Through discussions with his activist daughter and encounters with ghosts from his past, he gradually begins to question his existence, and especially his relationships with women.
Unknownia
Dash Shaw
Producers: Electric Chinoland’s Kyle Martin, Jane Samborski, Emily Wolver
World Sales: Mubi
Recently featured as part of the U.S. in Progress program of 2025, Unknownia is Dash Shaw‘s third feature film after 2016’s My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (a TIFF selection) and 2021’s Cryptozoo (a Sundance premiere). This time out the prolific American comic book writer/artist and animator has a younger audience in mind and he populated this film with the international voice cast flair in Tim Roth, Barbara Sukowa, Angeliki Papoulia, Larry Fessenden, Robbie Crandall and Sabrina Sickler. The Quinzaine has indeed programmed indie alternative animation and this would definitely fit the bill.
Little Rory needs to save her father who’s disappeared on a treasure quest during an unfortunate encounter with a dragon. Luckily, a weasel or mysterious beings called The Shapes are there to help.
Violence du corps de l’autre
Denis Côté
Producers: Voyelles Films’ Gabrielle Tougas-Fréchette and Guillaume Vasseur
World Sales: TBD
While he is more of a Berlinale and Locarno type of invitee, this Quebecois filmmaker could return to the section that hosted his 2009 docu Carcasses. Production on Denis Côté‘s seventeenth feature film (in just under two decades) was shot in two time frames – the majority of the film was shot around August of last year, and a quick wrap up portion was completed in January of this year. A tale about existential reckoning and the possibility of redemption and human connection, Côté’s current muse in Larissa Corriveau (Répertoire des villes disparues, Hygiène sociale, and Mademoiselle Kenopsia) toplines Violence du corps de l’autre with Vic+Flo ont vu un ours‘ Pierrette Robitaille and Philippe Rebbot completing the trio. Vincent Biron returns as the cinematographer.
Mira (Corriveau) travels the roads meeting desperate people with whom she seems to have formed strange death pacts. Without a home base, she stops at Madeleine and Ludo’s, two free spirits living in the forest. Taking a break from her missions, confused by a dazzling encounter with an excessive and intriguing young man, she takes advantage of this stopover to question her wanderings and reevaluate her dark contracts.