Critics’ Week Next Step II Programme selects filmmakers and composers for 2025 edition

Cannes’ Critics’ Week has unveiled the seven international filmmakers and three composers who are headed to Corsica for the third edition of its Next Step II programme running October 8-15.

This year’s projects include second features from The Settlers director Felipe Galvez, The Maiden’s Graham Foy, Alma Viva’s Cristele Alves Meira, The Woodcutter Story’s Mikko Myllylahti, and Convenience Store’s Michael Borodin.

Now in its third edition since launching in 2023, the initiative is designed to bring together directors and composers to both help the directors prepare their first or second feature films, and explore the connection between the screenwriting process and musical composition.

The extension of the sidebar’s main Next Step programme is supported by Sacem and the CNC, in partnership with the event’s new venue, the Corsican cultural center Casell’arte. Filmmakers are encouraged to develop their score from the very early stages of their feature film project.

2025 participants

Two of the films are first features and the remaining five are second films. Next Step director Thomas Rosso tells Screen: “We’ve realised that there is a real need for support for second films and we are here for that. It is also very significant that filmmakers who have already been through Next Step and enjoyed great success with their first films want to return with their second feature film.”

The class of 2025 includes Paris-based Chilean filmmaker Felipe Gálvez, who brings Impunity, a Spanish and English-language spy thriller set in 1998 around the arrest of dictator Augusto Pinochet in London produced by UK-Spain production house Rei Pictures and the UK’s Quiddity Films alongside France’s Les Films du Worso, Denmark’s Snowglobe and Chile’s Ronda Cine. Galves’ The Settlers premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2023 before going on to be Chile’s 2024 Oscars submission.

Canadian director Graham Foy is at work on his second feature Radio Radio about a five-year-old boy who has recurring nightmares about a man in a car crash who bears a strange family resemblance. FF Films and Taiga Pictures are producing. Foy’s first feature The Maiden played at a slew of festivals including Venice and TIFF.

Finnish filmmaker Mikko Myllylahti brings thriller The Mystery Of The Autumn Killer about a poet who is searching for a lost connection, a publisher trying to love a volatile artist, and a detective who must solve a series of strange cases to bring his lost partner back from another dimension, produced by Finland’s Aamu Film Company. Myllylahti’s The Woodcutter Story passed through Next Step before premiering at Critics’ Week in 2022. He also penned the script for Juho Kuosmanen’s The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Maki.

Portuguese-French director Cristele Alves Meira brings her second feature Joe about a young Portuguese immigrant who becomes a taxi driver and fixture of Pigalle’s lesbian nightlife scene as she searches for her mother. It is produced by France’s Les Films Pelleas, Take Shelter and Portugal’s O Som E A Furia. Meira’s debut feature Alma Viva, developed at Next Step, premiered at Critics’ Week in 2022 before going on to win five Sophia awards including best film at the Portuguese national film awards and represented Portugal at the Oscars.

Uzbekistan-born filmmaker Michael Borodin is en route with his second feature Seven Roads about two young women haunted by a ghost who embark on a deadly journey. Germany’s Einbahnstrasse Productions produces. His feature debut Convenience Store passed through Next Step before premiering at Berlin in 2022.

First features include French filmmaker Yannick Casanova’s family drama Fortunatu set in a mountain village in Corsica in the 1980s produced by France’s Les Films du Bal; and Swiss director Jela Hasler’s To Put Out One Fire about a woman working at a Zurich parks department fighting to protect urban trees who clashes with local bureaucracy - produced by Switzerland’s Langfilm and Germany’s Trimafilm.

The selected composers are Harry Allouche, who has composed music for Galves’ The Settlers, Cesar Acevedo’s Horizonte and Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir’s A South Facing Window; Camille Delafon who composed the score for Gallien Guibert’s No One And Nothing which was nominated for the European Soundtrack awards and for Leo Favier’s documentary Miyazaki, The Spirit Of Nature; and Pierre Leroux who most recently composed the score for Martin Jauvat’s Baise-En-Ville which premiered at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week.

Consultants are screenwriters Delphine Agut, Marie Amachoukeli and Julie Peyr, music supervisor Etienne Tricard and international sales veteran Agathe Valentin. The three script consultants are French, but, Rosso suggests, “all three have an international outlook: Delphine Agut writes for both French and international directors, Julie Peyr lives and works in the USA, and Marie Amachoukeli shot most of her latest film in Cape Verde.”

Next Step II will also welcome guests for masterclasses including Ghost Trail director Jonathan Millet, Kika filmmaker Alexe Poukine and Pierre Desprats who composed music for both Kika and Wonderwall, which both premiered at this year’s Critics’ Week.

The fledgling programme has already seen projects through completion. Lucía Aleñar Iglesias’ debut feature Forastera world premiered at this year’s Toronto, Konstantina Kotzamani’s Titanic Ocean is in post-production and expected to premiere at 2026 festivals, and Jacqueline Lentzou’s A Life In The Day Of Jo is in pre-production. Lentzou’s film is being composed by Delphine Malausséna after the two met at Next Step.

Rosso said the week-long musical matchmaking immersion is “quite rare among workshops like this where the filmmakers and composers can be paired right from the start of a project.”

Next Step’s upcoming 12^th edition will take place from Dec 6-12 in Normandy and Paris.

• Producer fees and pre-sales challenges: Six key themes from the 2025 Screen Summit