Ten international filmmakers whose short films premiered at past editions of Cannes’ Critics’ Week have been selected to prep their first features at the prestigious 12th Next Step programme, taking place from December 6 – 12 in France.
They are: UK-Irish filmmaker Roisin Burns; Estonian director Anna Hints; French filmmakers Marie Larrive and Carmen Leroi; Mexico’s Marinthia Gutierrez and Juan Pablo Villalobos; Brazil’s Leonardo Martinelli and Bruno Ribeiro; Dutch filmmaker Robert-Jonathan Koeyers ; and Malaysia’s Ananth Subramaniam.
The first part of Next Step is taking place at the Moulin d’Andé residence in Normandy before the participants head to Paris for networking events with the local film industry.
The filmmakers will be mentored on their scripts by international consultants Yacine Badday, Phillippe Barrière, Leyla Bouzid, Franco Lolli and Thomas van Zuylen, along with producer Juliette Lepoutre.
The filmmakers will also receive guidance for their scores from composers Florencia Di Concilio, Clémence Ducreux, The Penelopes, and SAYCET.
One project will be presented with the €2,500 Next Step prize at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026 and will take part in a residency at the Moulin d’Andé.
“There’s no need for quotas, parity is now natural among short films,” says Next Step director Thomas Rosso. “There’s been a real generational change.”
To date, 45 completed feature films have been selected for Next Step. They include 2025 titles Morad Mostafa’s Aisha Can’t Fly Away, Vytautas Katkus’ The Visitor, and Lucia Aleñar Iglesias’ Forastera.
According to organisers, seven further Next Step films will premiere in 2026, and nine are heading into production.
Feature projects
Burns’ Happy Hardcore is set in Liverpool in 2004 and is about a 17-year-old soldier who deserts from the Iraq War and heads home to hide in a tunnel.
Black Hairy Beast, by Hints is set during a folklore festival in Estonia where an Indian dancer falls for a local journalist.
From France, painter and animator Larrive is attending with Erika, a revenge thriller with gothic influences set in Brittany in 1999 about a gravely ill computer engineer who entrusts her life to a doctor rumoured to have discovered a miracle cure for cancer.
Leroi heads to Next Step with fantasy comedy L’Experience Possible about a young man who travels back in time to help save his older lover.
Nabor , by Mexican director Gutierrez, is set in Tijuana in the late 1950s and portrays a teenager who witnesses her parents’ relationship slowly disintegrate.
Also from Mexico, Villalobos feature script is Ladrones De Cuadros,, about a disillusioned painter turned delivery man who witnesses a murder and takes refuge in his grandmother’s home in Oaxaca.
Brazilian filmmaker Martinelli has Fantasma Neon, about a bicycle delivery worker in Rio de Janeiro who finds himself caught between ambition and loyalty
Fellow Brazilian director Ribeiro is attending with Saturday in Copacabana, about a thirtysomething pianist who runs into an old flame during a night out on the titular city’s bustling streets.
Rounding out the roster are Koeyers with Story Of August, about a teenager over three summers in a seaside town after her parents’ divorce and Subramaniam, whose 2025 short Bleat! won the Queer Palm in Cannes, who is working on Pray To The Thunder about a rebellious punk musician in a Tamil town in Malaysia run by an authoritarian priest.
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