This second year will maintain the same structure as 2021: the participants will work on 8 feature film projects (four Italians and four French ones) presented by teams of producers already paired with a director; besides them, the selection features 4 producers from France and 4 from Italy, who have applied without a project. We’ll need to wait a bit longer to see the final composition of the 8 teams that will work together month by month, until the final presentation next November in the frame of Torino Film Industry.
Alpi Film Lab - powered by TorinoFilmLab and Annecy Cinéma Italien, promoted by Museo Nazionale del Cinema and Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy and financed by Interreg Italia-Francia ALCOTRA 2014-2020 – European Regional Development Fund – aims at enhancing the cross-border film industry by boosting the value of the Italian-French co-production and strengthening its competitiveness on the international market.
Once again the quite balanced class - 13 men and 12 women - will be led by the Head of Studies Francesco Giai Via who affirmed how much Alpi Film Lab confirms the dynamism of independent cross-border production and trained by Giovanni Pompili and Julie Billy together with Chiara Laudani and Anna Ciennik.
Alpi Film Lab expands its reach while maintaining the centrality of Alcotra: it doesn’t only bring together directors and producers born or active in the territories concerned, but the selected projects, albeit linked to companies from other areas, have proved to find multiple stories in the Alcotra regions and location, as well as production opportunities. This contributes to making Alpi Film Lab a diversified platform for exchange with individual territorial realities and their cinematographic potential.
Shall we meet the main characters of Alpi Film Lab 2022?
You can find down below names, titles of the projects and a quick highlight on their professional paths.
ITALIAN PROJECTS SELECTED
GRISUN (Fiction)
Director: Andrea Parena
Producer: Francesca Duca
Company: BabyDoc Film (Turin)
Parena co-founded BabyDoc Film in 2007, a company that produced various documentaries selected by the main film festivals; he has also a great experience as a documentary filmmaker, for instance, his Nozze d'Agosto (2012) was presented at the Venice Film Festival, Venice Days/Venice Nights.
Born in Assisi, Duca was based in Rome, Brussels and Berlin before living an experience of almost 10 years as a producer in Morocco; she currently works as a freelance producer for BabyDoc Film and Le Moindre Geste Production.
I FIGLI DELLA SCIMMIA (Fiction)
Director: Tommaso Landucci
Producer: Andrea Calbucci
Company: Lungta Film (Rome)
Trained at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, personal assistant of Luca Guadagnino and Claudio
Giovannesi, Landucci’s first project Caveman - Il gigante nascosto, has been presented in the frame of Venice Days and at the Festival dei Popoli.
After numerous experiences in the field of theatre and communication, Calbucci joined Lungta Film in 2014 as a producer, the projects he managed got international awards such as the Coppa Volpi to Pierfrancesco Favino (Padrenostro).
I GAME YOU (Documentary/Animation)
Director: Laura Viezzoli
Producer: Lorenzo Cioffi
Company: Ladoc (Naples)
Viezzoli started filming at the age of 10 with a Sonny Hi8 with which she made her very first short film in stop motion and filmed all the family trips; she worked on two documentaries and within Alpi Film Lab she’ll take a further step in the animation documentary with her autobiography.
Mainly focusing on documentaries, the gaze of the Naples-based producer Cioffi has always been turned to Europe and the world; his interest now lies in the international co-production field after an experience with Eurodoc.
LA CASA BIANCA (Fiction)
Director: Francesco Romano
Producer: Raffaella Pontarelli
Company: Amarena Film (Naples and Rome)
After years spent on the football field, Romano tried his hand behind the camera. He attended the CSC in Rome, where he directed two short films that won different awards and were selected at international festivals.
Her first love ever was acting but after a while Pontarelli decided to change her life and moved abroad where a new spark was unleashed, when she came back to Italy, she decided to set up Amarena Film International, focusing on production and sales.
FRENCH PROJECTS SELECTED
AMERICAN HEROES (Fiction)
Director: Sophie Beaulieu
Producer: Camille Genaud
Company: Paraiso Production Diffusion (Paris)
Beaulieu grew up in Lyon and New York, after several small self-produced and formative films, she directed I did not shoot Jesse James and Salem, which was broadcast on France 2 and selected in several festivals. Genaud has been a partner at Paraíso Production since 2018, producing short and feature films, her first short film as a producer, Catching Fire by Michaël Soyez was selected at the 69th Berlinale shorts Competition in 2019.
CAPITAINE (Fiction)
Director: Romuald Rodrigues Andrade
Producer: Jérôme Nunes
Company: Films de Force Majeure (Marseille)
After 10 years of supervising audiovisual workshops for young people from low-income areas in the South of France, Rodrigues Andrade turned to cinema in 2018, after some experience with short films he is now ready for his first feature.
Nunes co-founded Films de Force Majeure in 2010, initially specialising in documentaries, he met Rodrigues Andrade thanks to a workshop and with this project he is transitioning between short and feature films.
PAR DELÀ LES MONTAGNES (Documentary)
Directors: Manon Ott & Grégory Cohen
Producer: Céline Loiseau
Company: TS Productions (Paris)
Ott and Cohen are filmmakers and researchers in the fields of cinema and social sciences; they are authors of several films that premiered at numerous film festivals in France and abroad, as well as of several books of texts and photographs.
Loiseau graduated in Documentary Film Directing; in 2002, she joined TS Productions - a production company created by Miléna Poylo and Gilles Sacuto - and ever since, she produced about 30 documentaries, including Grand Hotel Ballet by Jacques Deschamps.
UNDERDOG (Fiction)
Director: Zoel Aeschbacher
Producer: Nelson Ghrénassia
Company: YUKUNKUN PRODUCTIONS (Paris)
Aeschbacher was born in 1993 in Paris to a Vietnamese mother and a Swiss father. His graduation film, Bonobo, made its world premiere at the Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival and after numerous screenings and awards, the film won the Oscar for best student film in 2019.
Ghrénassia holds a Master Degree in dramaturgy and one in Digital Media Cinema; in 2010 he founded, with Gabriel Festoc, Yukunkun Productions, they have produced about 30 short films and have just finished a first feature film.
ITALIAN PRODUCERS WITHOUT PROJECT
CHIARA ANDRICH
Company: Ginko Film (Venice)
Founder of the production company Ginko Film focusing on documentary cinema that deals with issues related to the relationship between man and the environment and about the world of art, Andrich is moving her first steps in the field of international co-production.
MANUELA BUONO
Company: Slingshot Films (Trieste)
Born and based in Trieste (Italy), in 2013 Buono founded the production and sales company Slinghsot Films. For instance, she produced Freiköperkultur, selected at Venice International Critic's Week 2021, and Diteggiatura presented at Giornate degli Autori 2021 and IFFR 2022.
OTTAVIA FRAGNITO
Company: Maremosso (Milan)
After law school Fragnito decided to attend the School of Cinema in Milan in 2011, since then she started to collaborate as a consultant for various production companies, allowing her to deal directly with the system of European co-productions.
SALVATORE LIZZIO
Company: Revok (Rome)
Lizzio was born in Sicily, but he lived and worked in different cities around the world; he is one of the producers of Revok, with which he has produced several independent cinematographic and audiovisual works of quality and cultural and social commitment of an international character.
FRENCH PRODUCERS WITHOUT PROJECT
ALEXANDRE CHARLET
Company: Les Films du Cygne (Annecy)
Since childhood, Charlet knew about his passion for the audiovisual industry, after various experiences he founded Les Films du Cygne for delegate production. He is also the founder of Swan France and co-creator of Day For Night Productions in Paris and Le Studio Animation in Marseille.
CLÉMENCE CRÉPIN NEEL
Company: Moderato (Paris)
Crépin Neel graduated from Sciences-Po Paris in 2015 after studying Philosophy & Law and having worked in production companies in France and the USA; he co-founded moderato, an independent production house, with Igor Courtecuisse, carrying the intention of producing arthouse films by authors from a diverse background.
GIOVANNI DONFRANCESCO
Company: Bocalupo Films (Paris)
Donfrancesco is a florentine director and producer who has both Italian and French citizenship based in Paris; in Italy, he founded Altara Films while in France, he produces documentaries with Bocalupo Films. His works - as a director or producer - have been screened and sometimes awarded at a variety of international film festivals.
ANDREA QUERALT
Company: 4A4 Productions (Paris)
Since she was a child, Queralt was a very precocious and avid film lover. As she grew up, she realised she wanted to take on the role involving the most responsibilities, duties, passion and commitment in cinema: production.
Alpi Film Lab is realised in collaboration with: ANICA Associazione Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche Audiovisive Multimediali, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma, CNC Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, Film Commission Torino Piemonte, Film Commission Vallée d'Aoste, Genova Liguria Film Commission, Région Sud, UniFrance. It is acknowledged by Direzione Generale Cinema e Audiovisivo del Ministero della cultura.