Excursion‘s Una Gunjak, How to Have Sex‘s Molly Manning Walker & My Wonderful Stranger‘s Johanna Pyykkö are among the half dozen filmmakers who have been selected to take part of the Cannes Critics’ Week’s Next Step Vol.II. The filmmakers will be joined by three composers in what is a sort of summer camp designed to support directors who previously had a short film selected at La Semaine de la Critique, and are on their way to their first or second feature film. Gunjak’s How Melissa Blew a Fuse After tells the story of Melissa, who after stealing one million euros flees Germany to join her online lover in Montenegro. Hunted down and accompanied by her niece, she crosses the Balkans as her dream of escape spirals into chaos. Walker’s A24 backed Not Another F*cking Wedding is about Bobby and Jess are best friends and share an absolute hatred of weddings. They see them as outdated performances of heterosexual success dressed up as romance. Pyykkö’s The Boy from the Sea is set during WW2, where Henriet te (41) impulsively adopts a 10-year-old boy she believes to be a Finnish war child. It quickly becomes clear that he is something entirely other than a human being and her safe world is turned upside down when the role of being mother is pushed to its absolute limits. Here are the project listings: https://www.semainedelacritique.com/en/next-step/2026
Fellipe Fernandes Don’t Be a Stranger
Una Gunjak How Melissa Blew a Fuse
Delphine Leoni La Résidence
Molly Manning Walker Not Another F*cking Wedding
Johanna Pyykkö The Boy from the Sea
Guil Sela Life Is Beach
