The projects are finally ready to begin their intense training path that will last until November, the moment when they will be presented in front of an audience of carefully selected international producers, sales agents and other film industry professionals, also, the teams will have the chance to meet these decision makers one by one and to get awarded; all of that in the frame of the TFL Meeting Event.
As stated by the Head of Studies Violeta Bava and the curator Vincenzo Bugno:
"We are dealing with projects which are trying to deconstruct the respective worlds and realities. Some projects are working on history as ironic creative material and memories becoming private and social archives, as surviving strategies. Deconstruction also as first step to build up utopias. Even more than in the past we are discovering different layers of utopia in “our” projects. Personal, social, environmental utopias which become or could be reality. These radically different projects share a common attitude: it’s about re-inventing the world(s). Directors and writers that dare to re-invent past and present of their own world, inventing their own cinema”.
We cannot wait to help these stories to expand their worlds and to become actual films.
Here's the Screen International article about this selection.
Down below, the class of 2022.
ABITANTI – 1st film
Writer/Director: Kerstin Neuwirth (Austria)
Producer: Sophie Ahrens (Germany) - Schuldenberg Films
Alba returns to the mountain village of her childhood, now in ruins, where her mother is doggedly trying to knit together a community out of a ragged group of strangers. Forces of nature make approaching one another difficult - only the memory of past familiarity nourishes the hope that they can survive together.
BIRTH RIGHT - 1st film
Writer/Director: Inbar Horesh (Israel)
Producer: Alona Refua (Israel) - Green Productions
A group of young Russian Jews arrive in Israel on a heritage tour. One of them is Natasha, who recently found out she was Jewish, at her father's funeral. Escaping her grief and her mother, she hopes to find a new home. As sexual experiences clash with Jewish nationalism, Natasha discovers an Israel so different from the one she imagined.
BURNING WELL – 1st film
Writer/Director: MG Evangelista
(USA/Philippines)
Producer: Karishma Dev Dube
(USA/India) - BURNING WELL LLC.
This is a reimagining of the Prodigal Son story with TikTok, egg rolls and a queer romance featuring FRAN, a genderqueer influencer, who returns home to Upstate New York. Realizing that they've shunned their small-town family and friends, Fran must repair relationships that remain close to their heart.
DENGUE – 1st film
Writer/Director: Prantik Basu (India)
Producer: Tanaji Dasgupta (India) - RIVERINE FILMS
During a sudden summer rain, an unlikely friendship blossoms between a migrant worker and a medical student in the suburbs of Calcutta. Their relationship is soon put to test by the fear of a fatal virus.
GLORY B – 1st film
Writer/Director: Konstantinos Antonopoulos (Greece)
Co-writer: Luigi Campi (Italy)
Producer: Fani Skartouli (Greece) - Either/Or Productions
703AD. Two pilloried convicts -- a naive beekeeper and a dethroned emperor -- face each other and themselves, as they struggle to escape the deserted island they have shipwrecked on.
LIGHTLY ON THE EARTH – 1st film
Writer/Director: Sara Fgaier (Italy)
Producer: Marco Alessi (Italy) - DUGONG FILMS
Gian, an aging composer, has lost his memory. A forgotten diary, resurfaced from the depths of his past, will show him the way back from oblivion. The guiding star: Leila, the love of his life.
QUE FACIL ME HAS OLVIDADO – 2nd film
Writer/Director: Isabel Lamberti (The Netherlands)
Producer: Stienette Bosklopper (The Netherlands) - Circe Films Production
By forming a chaotic family together in their small apartment in Madrid, four female Latin American migrants find comfort far away from home.
STRAIGHT AHEAD, ON YOUR RIGHT / AL FONDO A LA DERECHA– 2nd film
Writer/Director: Marta Hernaiz Pidal (Mexico)
Producer: Rosa Galguera (Mexico) - Cine Vendaval
Every weekend, a group of posh teen friends party at an exclusive nightclub. Meanwhile, Estela secretly sneaks out from her house to go there to work, to emancipate from the strict rules of the Jehovah's Witness community she belongs to. Inside the women's toilet, the girl's paths will cross to show us how they handle the limits and expectations of their own societies.
TERRA – 2nd film
Writer/Director: Gabrielle Demeestère (France/US)
Producer: Clémentine Mourão-Ferreira (France/Portugal) - so-cle
TERRA is a darkly comic, psychological horror film about a PoliSci professor, and former radical activist, who moves to an isolated college for her first teaching job. She becomes intertwined with a charismatic female student who draws her back into her former pursuits, and her desire to effect change leads her down an extreme path.
THE FUTURE IS AN ELDER COW – 2nd film
Writer/Director: Janis Rafa (Greece)
Producer: Konstantinos Kontovrakis (Greece) – Heretic
In a small town ravaged by infertility, rumours spread that women started giving birth to animals.
FeatureLab 2022 is organised by TorinoFilmLab - National Museum of Cinema, thanks to the support of Creative Europe - MEDIA Sub-programme of the European Union and in partnership with Polish Film Institute, which is hosting the 1st residential workshop, German Films and Unifrance.