Cannes Critics’ Week Highlights 10 Filmmakers for Feature Development Program Next Step 

Cannes Critics’ Week is highlighting 10 filmmakers – and their 10 projects – during the 12^th edition of the Next Step workshop, which comes to a climax with an Industry Day in Paris where cineastes meet with French industry members. This prestigious initiative focuses on the feature debuts of directors who have previously showcased their short films at Critics’ Week.  

Running Dec. 6-12, this year’s Next Step will see directors competing for a newly labelled award, the Next Step Sooner Prize, adjudicated by the new French streaming platform focusing on movies created from the merger of the Filmo and Universciné platforms and launching Jan. 2026.

The Next Step Sooner Prize will take in a €2,500 ($2,925) grant and an invitation to the Cannes Film Festival. The winner will be announced at Cannes next May.

By the end of this week, selected filmmakers will have worked with consultants Yacine Badday, Philippe Barrière, Leyla Bouzid, Juliette Lepoutre, Franco Lolli and Thomas van Zuylen at the Moulin d’Andé, before moving on to Paris. One director will also have the opportunity to take part in a residency at the Moulin d’Andé–CÉCI.

As for details of projects, Estonian director Anna Hints, behind the celebrated “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” will unveil “Black Hairy Beast.”

Set during a folklore festival, the film sees Indian dancer Mahesh and Estonian journalist Liis fall madly in love. However, as Mahesh tries to find his place in his lover’s country, he sees a shift in his body and identity, awakening a cursed mythological creature. As stated in the Next Step catalog, their love “soon grapples with society’s gaze and the wild instincts they find within.”

The project is produced by Johanna Maria Tamm and Evelin Penttilä for Stellar Film (Estonia), as well as by Hints herself and Tushar Prakash for Kae Noh. Hints previously joined forced with Prakash on short “Sauna Day.”

“Inspired by our own intercultural love story, it follows two people who carry both the pain of ‘being wrong’ and the wild freedom that arrives when you stop trying to fit in. The film dances with opposites: intimacy with grandeur, horror with laughter, irony with pathos,” she added.

“Rap merges with ancient chants, Indian and Estonian mythologies collide, creating a space where something visceral, fresh and beautiful can emerge. The film transforms shame and fear into songs and questions how to love ‘the other’ both within ourselves and in someone else.”

“At its core, the film is about love set against the expectations and prejudices of culture, gender roles, othering and xenophobia. It’s told through the metaphors of body transformations and reimagining of the musical genre, but not by conforming to it,” Hints told Variety.

With the support of the French production company Barberousse Films, Róisín Burns will present “Happy Hardcore” about a teenager who deserts his post in the midst of the Iraq War and returns to England. On the run, he finds his sister – the person dearest to him. Hunted by the army, he is forced to hide in a tunnel. “Soon, the violence and loneliness he tried to escape catch up with him,” it was revealed. 

Driven by her childhood memories, Róisín’s cinema explores what it’s like to grow up working-class in Northern England, “where dancing and drinking offer only a fleeting form of escapism.”

In “Nabor,” Marinthia Gutiérrez will go back to 1950s Tijuana, where a girl “discovers love, shame, and family secrets in a home plagued by jealousy and her father’s nights in cabarets.” Amid the turmoil, “her gaze becomes that of a generation awakening, witnessing the end of innocence and the birth of doubt.”

“As a filmmaker from Tijuana living in Los Angeles, I’m reaching for a bold, Hollywood-scale auteur film shot on 35mm and 16mm, and told from the inside at a time when Hollywood is struggling to reinvent itself,” noted the director.

“We’re reclaiming our city’s image with an unapologetically analog vision, engraving its memory directly onto celluloid — a love letter to the border and a reminder that cinema can still be physical, visionary, and personal, pointing toward the kind of movies we still believe are possible.”

The film is produced by Melissa Castañeda for Violeta Cine (Mexico), while Lucas Le Postec and Thibault de Gantès are co-producing for L’Heure D’Eté (France). 

Another French company, Eddy Cinéma – and Céline Vanlint – will oversee animated “Erika” by Marie Larrivé. Set in 1999, it follows Sylvia, a retired computer engineer who is gravely ill. She has entrusted her life to Dr. Dubois, who, according to rumours in the village, has discovered a miracle cure for cancer. However, Sylvia begins to question her doctor’s methods. 

“It’s an animated revenge movie set in Brittany in 1999 against the backdrop of the storm of the century and an oil spill. Currently in the treatment stage, we will soon begin work on the storyboard,” said Larrivé.

Also a French film, Carmen Leroi’s “L’Expérience impossible” is produced by Léa Baggi for Sans Regret and Alexandre Gavras for KG Production. It tells the story of Théo, who is passionately in love with Eve, who is 20 years his senior. When Eve falls seriously ill, Théo is devastated. A strange doctor whom he found to treat Eve sends him back to 2004, where he must live in the body of an alternate version of himself.

“In ‘L’expérience impossible,’ there will be a great love story and a journey through time! We will see that love has its rightful moment, meaning that when it’s time, it’s time, and before that time, unfortunately, it wasn’t time yet,” said the director.

In “Story of August,” Robert-Jonathan Koeyers looks at the eponymous teenager who, following her parents’ divorce, spends her holidays with her father in a seaside town in transition. Over time, she uncovers the secrets and silences within her family while searching for her own identity and learning to “face the emotional legacy they have left her and break the cycle of family trauma.”

Derk-Jan Warrink and Koji Nelissen are producing for Keplerfilm in the Netherlands. 

“Told over three turbulent summers, ‘Story of August’ is an intimate 2D animated film rooted in Black joy, the search for a home away from home, and the everyday complexities of growing up,” said Robert-Jonathan, calling such themes “largely underexplored within the field of animation.”

Brazil’s Leonardo Martinelli will spotlight “Fantasma Neon,” in which João, a bicycle delivery worker in Rio de Janeiro, dreams of buying a motorbike to improve his life. Since his mother died, he has become the sole provider of the family. When an accident at work triggers protests, “caught between ambition and loyalty, João discovers the cost of his dreams in a city where singing is also an act of resistance.”

“We seek to deepen my exploration of the gig economy through a musical rooted in the streets, blending social struggle with artistic expression in music and dance. Inspired by the many possibilities of the musical genre and attentive to how postcolonial structures shape everyday life, we experiment with cinematic forms that merge choreography, music, and the labor of the people who make the city.”

The project expands Martinelli’s Locarno Golden Leopard-winning short, a searing put-down – part song and dance, shot in lush tones, part near docu realism – of gig economy iniquity. The feature project s the work of Duas Mariola Filmes and Brazilian producers Felipe M. Bragança and Marina Meliande, while Laís Diel and Bruno Ribeiro, and Reduto Filmes, are set to deliver “Saturday in Copacabana.”

Directed by Ribeiro, it sees a 30-something pianist, prone to inner turmoil, who runs into an old flame just as a major turning point is looming in her life. “The bustling streets, music, and the memories stir emotions she thought were forgotten. At dawn, she must choose between the comfort of the present and the pull of an unfinished past.”

“I want to engage with the playful spirit of Brazil’s 1930s–50s chanchadas, following a restless pianist through one night that plays like a screwball comedy carried by music and romance on the streets of Rio, where different temporalities bleed into each other,” he said.

“The goal is to create a dreamlike, character-driven film in which Copacabana itself becomes a shifting stage, populated by the living and by echoes of other eras, and in which a single Saturday night is colored by memory, desire and doubt.”

Juan Pablo Villalobos will focus on “Ladrones de cuadros,” produced by Mexico’s Laterna Films and Louise Riousse and co-produced by Charlotte Vande Vyvre for Balade Sauvage Productions. 

In the film, after witnessing a murder, Arcadio – a painter turned delivery man in Mexico City – escapes an attempt on his life and finds refuge at his grandmother’s home in the state of Oaxaca. As the days peacefully pass in the village, he meets a mysterious Finnish art conservator and claims some of his grandmother’s paintings as his own – until the strange killer finally tracks him down.

“It’s a contemplative comedy in which a painter going through a crisis bumps into a killer who pushes him back to his roots,” he explained.

In “Pray to the Thunder,” Ananth Subramaniam will take his audience to a Tamil town in Malaysia, dominated by an authoritarian priest. There, a rebellious young woman called Thunder channels her anger by performing with her punk band on the village stage, normally reserved for the priest’s religious processions. 

“Their music electrifies the youths and stirs the wrath of traditionalists, igniting a confrontation between modernity and superstition. As tensions rise, Thunder discovers a mystical power that threatens to tip this already delicate balance.”

“Clashing with her traditional community to fuse rebel spirit with cultural roots, Thunder, a young Malaysian Tamil punk rocker, claims a life that’s truly her own,” he stated.

Choo Mun Bel produces for Sixtymac Pictures (Malaysia), while Subramaniam co-produces for Idio Sync Inc. alongside Epicmedia (Philippines), Akanga Film Asia and Dw (France).

The Next Step initiative will continue its collaboration with the SACEM on cinema scoring by inviting composers Florencia Di Concilio, Clémence Ducreux, the Penelopes and Saycet. 2026 will also see the launch of the Next Step Studio, in partnership with DW, with Indonesia taking centre stage in collaboration with KawanKawan Media. 

“For its 12th edition, Next Step is maintaining its momentum of successful projects coming to fruition,” said Thomas Rosso, Cannes Critics’ Week Programme Manager and Next Step Director. 

“This class of directors and their projects reflect the commitment to diversity at Cannes Critics’ Week, as curated by Ava Cahen and her committee. Half of the projects are directed by women, with a strong geographical showing for Latin America.” Two projects are from Mexico and two are from Brazil, including one, Ribeiro’s, supported by the Projeto Paradiso Foundation. 

The selection also features “a variety of forms, including two unique animation projects and genres ranging from romantic comedy and social drama to political musicals and magical realism.” The workshop is set to end with an Industry Day in Paris where sales agents, distributors, and French production companies “are expected to attend in large numbers,” he said. 

“They are demonstrating their trust in our selection process and the vitality of emerging talent.”