EXCLUSIVE: How To Have Sex filmmaker Molly Manning Walker and Norway’s Johanna Pyykkö are among six directors heading to Corsica for the fourth edition of Cannes Critics’ Week’s Next Step II, as the festival sidebar restructures its talent development initiatives under a streamlined Next Step banner.
The Next Step II programme runs October 1-8 and brings together four filmmakers developing second features and two working on debuts. Manning Walker is developing her second feature Not Another F*cking Wedding, produced by Plan B and A24, while Pyykkö is working on The Boy From The Sea with Norway’s Eye Eye Pictures, whose recent credits include Cannes winners Fjord and Sentimental Value.
Next Step was launched in 2014 to support Critics’ Week short filmmakers making the leap to their first feature. The original programme will continue as Next Step I, with its 13th edition running December 4-10, while Next Step II will now focus primarily on the transition to a second feature.
The programme is run in collaboration with Corsican cultural organisation Casell’Arte, with support from France’s CNC and music rights body Sacem.
“We wanted to bring some order to all of these workshops we’ve been developing,” said Critics’ Week programmer and Next Step director Thomas Rosso. “A festival is crucial – it’s the first step in launching a filmmaker’s career – but today it’s not enough.”
“Caméra d’Or syndrome”
Next Step II’s revamped focus on second films grew out of a recurring question from filmmakers who had successfully navigated their debuts: what next? “Making a second film is almost more complicated than making a first one,” said Rosso.
A poorly received debut can make financing a follow-up harder, while success brings pressures of its own. Filmmakers can spend months travelling with a breakthrough film before confronting expectations around what comes next – what Rosso describes as “Caméra d’Or syndrome”.
Manning Walker exemplifies the trajectory Critics’ Week hopes to sustain. Her short Good Thanks, You? was selected for the sidebar in 2020 before she was invited to take part in Next Step the following year with her debut feature How To Have Sex, which subsequently went on to win the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes in 2023.
The UK filmmaker’s follow-up Not Another F*cking Wedding marks a tonal shift. It is described as “a non-marriage comedy” about two best friends who make a pact never to get married, only for life to get in the way: love arrives, bringing with it the chaos of weddings and relationships. Production is scheduled for spring 2027.
Pyykkö’s The Boy From The Sea, produced by Dyveke Bjørkly Graver and Andrea Berentsen Ottmar of Eye Eye Pictures, is an intimate fantasy about a child during the Second World War in Norway adopted by a woman who soon discovers he may not be human. The shoot is planned for summer 2028. Pyykkö’s debut My Wonderful Stranger premiered in Gothenburg in 2024 and was released in France by Pyramide.
Four other filmmakers are participating in Next Step II, including Bosnian Una Gunjak, who is developing her second feature How Melissa Blew A Fuse, a road movie inspired by the true story of a woman who steals €1m and travels from Germany to Montenegro in search of a lover she met online. Amra Bakšić Čamo of SCCA/PRO.BA produces, with co-producers in Croatia, Germany and France.
Brazil’s Fellipe Fernandes, an assistant director on Kleber Mendonça Filho’s three most recent features, is developing his second feature Don’t Be A Stranger, about a young nurse searching for his former partner against a backdrop of homophobic killings. Zebra Filmes’ Dora Amorim and Júlia Machado produce.
French filmmaker Guil Sela, winner of Critics’ Week’s Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for short Montsouris in 2024, is developing his debut feature Life Is Beach, a romantic comedy about a dreamy young guitarist who sets out to become a lifeguard on France’s southwest coast. Noëlle Levenez and Clara Marquardt are producing for their new French production outfit Ceremonie.
Corsican filmmaker and producer Delphine Léoni also heads to the residence with her first film La Résidence, produced by Tamara Films’ Carole Chassaing, about a woman assisting her theatre-director partner on a new production exploring political violence, only for the troupe’s ideals to collide with human frailties.
Three emerging composers – Clémentine Charuel, Santiago Dolan and Yasmine Meddour – will also take part, working with the directors to help to score their films.
Next Step graduates
Two films that went through Next Step II premiered in 2026: Jacqueline Lentzou’s A Day In The Life Of Jo: Chapter Phaedra won the directing prize in Venice’s Horizons section, while Konstantina Kotzamani’s Titanic Ocean premiered in Un Certain Regard.
Upcoming alumni projects include Felipe Gálvez’s Impunidad, starring Sebastian Stan and Ana de Armas, Yannick Casanova’s Corsican project Furtunatu and Jela Hasler’s To Put Out One Fire.
Around half of the projects that have passed through Next Step have subsequently been made. “It’s not that Next Step alone makes these films happen,” said Rosso. “But it accelerates things.”
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