Sort of like what the Sundance labs do to nurture promising (mostly U.S) filmmaker talent, the Cannes Résidence, presided by Gilles Jacob, does the exact same with world talents. This year’s six new candidates include the Mexican helmer Francisco Vargas Quevedo whose festival favortie El Violin (The
Violin) garnered international acclaim and he is joined by Rebecca Daly (Irish, 28 years old), Nikias Chryssos (German, 29 years
old), Adrian Sitaru (Romanian, 36 years old), Manuel Nieto Zas (Uruguayan, 35 years old) and Yang Heng (Chinese, 32 years old).
Each year twelve participants are selected and invited to live in Paris for four
and a half months as they embark on a course designed to help them in the
writing and production of their films, with invaluable help and support from
film professionals.
The Résidence has received more than ninety directors since 2000, and assisted in the making of some fifty films. Recent examples include Nadine Labaki’s Caramel and Jaime Rosales’ Solitary
Fragments (La Soledad) (“La Soledad”).
