Projects
Projects
The Shelter
Category: Fantastic 7
Directed by: Talal Selhami
Produced by: Lamia Chraïbi
Country of Production: France, Morocco
Original Title: Le Refuge
Genre: Psychological Horror
Language: Arabic, French
Cairo International Film Festival
Paris. A Syrian refugee and war survivor, has to take care of an old invalid French man at the end of his life, but being close to death again awakens ghosts from the past.
Rock Bottom
Directed by: Maria Trenor
Produced by: Alba Sotorra SL, co-productions companies : GS Animation, Jaibo Films, Empatic
Country of Production: Spain, Poland
Original Title: Rock Bottom
Language: English, original language : Catalan
Runtime: 80'
Completed in: 2024
Through the music of Robert Wyatt, the animated musical « Rock Bottom » plunges into the passionate love story of Bob and Alif, two young artists immersed in the creative whirlwind of early 70’s hippie culture.
Caleta Palace
Category: Málaga Goes to Cannes
Directed by: José Antonio Hergueta
Produced by: José Antonio Hergueta (MLK Producciones)
Country of Production: Spain
Original Title: Caleta Palace
Language: Spain
Runtime: 97'
Completed in: 2023
The siege of Malaga in Feb 1937 shook the World: a libertarian revolution would end under Italian tanks. Out of memories of journalists and writers who lived or passed by Red Málaga, reenacted by 8 players, this fake documentary recreates the fall of the first Republican city in Spanish Civil War.
Hani
Category: HAF Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Hou Dasheng
Produced by: Wang Hongwei, Li Zhaoyu, Li Shuaizhi (Jiagu Culture Communication Co. Ltd)
Country of Production: Canada
Original Title: 哈尼
Language: Putonghua, Hani Language
Runtime: 90'
Completed in: 2023
Deep in the mountain, 14-year-old Hani and 12-year-old Pushkar are ready to wed. After Hani makes a reckless act to obtain money for the dowry, the love between them is extinguished.
Triple Oh!
Category: Queer Screen Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Poppy Stockell | Writer: Erica Harrison
Produced by: Poppy Stockell, Alexandra Galloway, Tamasin Simpkin | Sirius Pictures
Country of Production: Australia
Original Title: Triple Oh!
Language: English
Runtime: 45'
Completed in: 2023
Triple Oh! is a dark comedy-drama following the lives of two ambulance paramedics, as they save lives in absurd medical emergencies. Their personalities clash and are tested when street-smart Tayls introduces by-the-book Cate to her unconventional policy of having sex when a patient dies.
Consider Vera
Directed by: Marina Stepanska
Produced by: Natalia Libet | Esse Production House
Country of Production: Ukraine
Original Title: Consider Vera
Language: Ukrainian
Runtime: 100'
Budget: 1 253 875 Eur
Completed in: 2025
Nina is a 6-year old curious girl who lives with her mother Antonina in a small village on the outskirts of Kyiv. Vera, a wild woman, appears in their small village and changes their lives dramatically. A film about womanhood in Ukraine in the 80s.
The Camera Never Cries
Original Title: الكاميرا لا تجيد البكاء
Directed by: Elsadig Abdelgayoum, Abuzar Adam
Produced by: Alyaa Musa (Black Balance Artistic Production, Sudan)
Country of Production: Sudan, Qatar
Runtime: 75'
Expected Release: April, 2024
Production Stage: Production
Budget: €200.000 (25% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Co-producers, sales agents, buyers, festivals
Synopsis:
When Elsadig and Abuzar meet while filming the Sudanese revolution 2019, neither knew they would eventually turn the camera on each other. An intimate journey of a growing friendship between two directors, whom seeking redemption and beauty through the art of filmmaking when all the odds are against them.
Director’s profile:
Elsadig Abdelgayoum is a Sudanese photographer and filmmaker. He studied Multimedia and participated in a few filmmaking and photography workshops in Khartoum and other cities in the continent. Elsadig employs filmmaking, photography not only as tools to tell stories, but to research and develop further understandings and new prespectives towards his own reality. In 2012 Abuzar Osman graduated from the telecommunication engineering. His passion of classic photography started during his childhood before fleeing Darfur region. Aubzar has joined filmmaking workshops and directed two graduation projects. Between December 2018 until the end of March Abuzar joined a journalistic network Ayin (Witness).
Producer’s profile:
Transforming from a Development professional to a storyteller, Alyaa is searching for controversy, hope and beauty behind closed doors. She has creative credits as a producer, director, cinematographer, editor and visual artist in about ten shorts that were screened in international film festivals. Alyaa has two higher degrees in filmmaking from the UK; PGD London Film School 2012 and MA with distinction in Cinematography and Post Production from the University of Greenwich 2014. A graduate of EAVE producers workshop 2021, Alyaa is currently leading two feature documentaries that are supported by regional and international documentary funds and film institutions.
Sisters of the Union
Category: Canada Showcase
Directed by: Dan Popa
Produced by: Line Sander Egede | TAK Films (Canada)
Country of Production: Canada
Original Title: Sisters of the Union
Runtime: 90'
Expected Release: January 2027
Production Stage: Post-Production
Budget: $296,637 (89% in place)
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Gap Financing
Synopsis:
Sisters of the Union is a fantastical autobiographical documentary about my family’s life during Communism in Romania. The story is told through the voices and challenging shifts of five women that each come to symbolize various eras from the rise to the decline of the Union.
Director’s Profile:
Dan Popa is a Canadian filmmaker of Romanian origin. Popa graduated in film production from Concordia University. In his work, we find new explorations, as much in the narrative form as in the aesthetic treatment of the image. Always in search of crafting a contemporary cinema voice, his filmmaking process draws inspiration from various visual languages.
He directed several short films which won awards in Canada and at several international film festivals. His most recent immersive Installation project Partitions for Aquamarine is in dialogue with Symphony in Aquamarine (2018), his first feature film. These two works offer a poetic exploration of human nature in the face of its world in transition.
Producer’s Profile:
Line Sander Egede, originally from Copenhagen and based in Montreal since 2015, began producing films in Denmark in 2010. She founded TAK Films in 2018, producing works such as Vacarme (2020) by Neegan Trudel and Gabor (2021) by Joannie Lafrenière, focusing on auteur-driven fiction and documentaries with strong social and artistic ambition. From 2021 to 2024, she was a partner at production company Art et Essai and, among other projects, produced Ariane Louis-Seize’s Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023), which premiered in Venice and Toronto and was sold to over 70 territories.
Burning Daddy
Category: Chile-Colombia Showcase
Directed by: Tana Gilbert
Produced by: Paola Castillo Villagrán | Errante (Chile), Dirk Manthey | Dirk Manthey Films (Germany), Carolina Astudillo, Wendy Espinal | Isolda Films (Spain)
Country of Production: Chile, Germany, Spain
Original Title: Papito Corazón
Runtime: 80'
Expected Release: September 2026
Production Stage: Editing
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Gap Financing
Synopsis:
Camila and her family reconstruct the image of her swindler father through photographs, court records and memories fractured by his violence. A charismatic man who promised limitless success. When the fantasy crumbled, intimacy became fear and silence a way to endure. The film traces the dismantling of a father shaped by neoliberal illusion, and the fragile rebuilding of those who survived his fiction
Director’s Profile:
Tana Gilbert is a filmmaker graduated from the University of Chile with a Master’s degree in Documentary Cinema. Her work focuses on the representation of the domestic and the political, exploring family archives and the lives of women in Latin American contexts.
Her first feature film, Malqueridas (2023), received the Grand Prize for Best Film at the Critics’ Week of the Venice International Film Festival and has earned over 30 awards and 60 official selections at international festivals. Her short films — Rest, Zulema (2013), I’m Still Here (2017) and No Star (2022) — were screened and awarded at festivals such as Hot Docs, Chicago and the Valladolid International Film Week.
She is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, within the research line in Cinema. Her work has established her as one of the new voices in contemporary Chilean cinema.
Producer’s Profile:
Paola Castillo Villagrán is a director and producer of award-winning documentaries, including Beyond My Grandfather Allende (Golden Eye Prize, Cannes Film Festival, 2015), Malqueridas (Best Film, Venice International Critics’ Week, 2023), The Lifeguard, Cielo and Relentless Memory, among others. She has also directed Frontera, Genoveva and 74m².
She is co-founder and Executive Director of the Chilean Documentary Corporation (CCDoc) and Deputy Director of the Chiledoc sector brand, both non-profit organisations supporting the national and international distribution of Chilean documentaries. She has served as a jury member at film festivals, a mentor for documentary labs, and an evaluator for international funding programs.
She is a professor in the Film and TV programme at the University of Chile and in the Audiovisual Direction programme at the Catholic University.
Land of Evanescence
Category: Docs by the Sea Showcase
Original Title: Vùng đất của những biến mất
Directed by: Trang Nguyen Thi Xuan
Produced by: Wilfredo Manalang | Fusee, (Philippines), Charlotte Lelong | Trance Films (France)
Country of Production: Vietnam, Philippines, France
Runtime: 75'
Expected Release: November 2026
Production Stage: Post-Production
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents/Distributors, Buyers, Impact Producer, Gap Financing, Strategic Ideas, Post Services.
Synopsis:
Land of Evanescence is a creative documentary where the director, a child of the post-war era, makes the link between her recurring nightmares and a trauma inherited from the Vietnam War.
Director’s Profile:
Nguyen Thi Xuan Trang is an acclaimed filmmaker with nearly 20 years of experience in international cinema. After early work in commercials, she transitioned to independent film in 2014 via the Kyoto Filmmaker Lab. Her career gained global momentum at the Bucheon Fantastic Film School and Locarno’s Open Doors Lab, where she won the 1st Prize FAI Producer Grant.
A pivotal figure in Southeast Asian cinema, Trang is known for high-profile collaborations with Trương Minh Quý. She was Line Producer for Hair, Paper, Water… (2025), the Golden Leopard winner at Locarno. Her production Viet and Nam (2024) competed in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, following the success of The Tree House (2019). In 2022, she debuted as a director with After Taste, which premiered at Fantasia. Her work reflects a deep commitment to independent storytelling and global co-production.
Producer’s Profile:
Wilfredo Manalang is the founder of FUSEE and a prominent producer in the Asian film industry. His diverse co-production portfolio includes Plan 75 (2022), which won a Cannes Camera d’Or Special Mention, and Don’t Cry, Butterfly (2024), the Venice Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner. Other notable works include Elsewhere at Night (2025), winner of Best Screenplay at Torino, and Through Your Eyes (2025), selected for the Berlinale Short Competition.
Locally, he produced Blue Room (2022) and Topakk (2023), which premiered at Locarno. An alum of EAVE Ties That Bind and APOSTLAB, Manalang previously served as Managing Director for International Production at ABS-CBN and Executive Director of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (2016–2019). He also represented the nation as a board member of the Directors’ Guild of the Philippines.
