The 2024 selection includes 10 projects: 1 documentary and 9 fictions; chosen among 175 applications. The 21 participants come from 13 different countries: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Ukraine.
The training path runs from June until November 2024, with 1 week-long residential module in Opatjia (Croatia), thanks to the support of Croatian Audiovisual Centre, followed by the online module (in September) and leading up to the final session in November in Turin, with the TFL Meeting Event.
Let’s meet the participants:
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JO: CHAPTER PHAEDRA - 2nd feature film (fiction)
Logline: Jo, a 15-year-old tomboy, has a nightmare made of fog and aurora light: her dog is lost, her voice cannot be heard, and her surroundings seem completely unfamiliar. Has the tone of the day been set yet?
Writer/Director: Jacqueline Lentzou (Greece) - previously in ScriptLab 2017
Producer: Annabelle Aronis (Greece)
Production Company: Avion Films / Greece
ANTONIVKA - 2nd feature film (fiction)
Logline: “I will not die of death - I will die of life” Mykhailo Semenko.
The future: postwar Ukraine. A young couple, Aurora and Darko, move to the house of her grandfather who survived village occupation alone and is recovering from a mild stroke. New life begins, but death is still present.
Writer/Director: Kateryna Gornostai (Ukraine)
Producer: Viiktoria Khomenko (Ukraine)
Production Company: Moon Man LLC / Ukraine
COLD ASHES CAN CAUSE FOREST FIRES - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: The sudden departure of her mother, opens up a deep chasm between a 13 year old girl and her father who manages a hotel in a small mountain town in the Himalayas. Their relationship is put to further strain due to the arrival of old family friends during the winter holidays.
Writer/Director: Ashmita Guha Neogi (India)
Producer: Avantika Singh Desbouvries (India)
Production Company: Salt for Sugar Films / France
HARD SUB - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: Anticipating war, Amir's ex-wife is taking their daughter to Europe. Now he is forced to a quick decision: should he stay, go back to his motherland, or become an immigrant all over again.
Writer/Director: Novruz Hikmet (Azerbaijan)
Producer: Julian Gerchow (Germany)
Production Company: plotlessfilm GbR / Germany
LA NOTTE BRUCIA - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: Massimo and his friends live in the suburbs of Rome. They have a dangerous hobby: stealing from rich young people in discos. One night something goes wrong. Panic spreads and the crowd goes crazy, trampling some people. One guy ends up in a coma. The hunt for those responsible starts. Maximus, on the other hand, goes on with his life as if nothing had happened, among petty theft and new love affairs.
Writer/Director: Angelica Gallo (Italy)
Producer: Andrea Gori (Italy) - previously in Up & Coming 2022
Production Company: Lumen Films Srl / Italy
THE BOY AND THE FIGHT OF THE SPIDERS - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: In Southern Philippines, a carefree, spider-obsessed young boy loses his older brother and father in a mine’s collapse, and forced to grow up to look for their bodies in the rubble, only to dig up a web of lies woven together by the powers-that-be, realizing it takes more than a hero’s ransom to extricate his family from the town and its ever-collapsing tunnels.
Writer/Director: Jarell Mahinay Serencio (Philippines) - previously in ScriptLab 2022
Co-writer: Homer B. Novicio (Philippines)
Producer: Claire Lajoumard (France)
Production Company: Acrobates Films / France
SEA, STAR, WOMAN - 1st feature film (creative documentary)
Logline: All I have of my mother are photos with holes cut out of them where her face had been. And a fleeting memory, that of a fallen woman fleeing her country, South Korea, for the United States, leaving her two children behind. After thirty years of amnesia, my wandering gaze will take us on a journey across three continents and my complex family’s relationships, exploring the limits of love, fear, desire, memory, and vision, searching for traces of my mother.
Writer/Director: Jeunghae Yim (South Korea)
Producer: Helen Olive (UK/France) - previously in FeatureLab 2020
Production Company: 5 à 7 Films/France
SPADCYNA - LEGACY - 2nd feature film (fiction)
Logline: Minsk 2020: "25 years of Lukashenka is enough" echoes through the streets and paints the walls of Belarus as the post-Soviet country teeters on the brink of upheaval. As the personal becomes increasingly political, a father, mother, son and daughter find themselves at opposite ends of a systemic power struggle that dates back to the Soviet era and casts its shadow over a family that has always been a pawn of totalitarian power.
Writer/Director: Aliaksei Paluyan (Belarus)
Producer: Paulina Toenne (Germany)
Production Company: Tamtam Film GmbH / Germany
VERSORGEN - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: Versorgen immerses us into the choreographed realm of care work through everyday encounters between human bodies, architectures and machines.
Writer/Director: Nora Longatti (Switzerland)
Producer: Chantal Scheiner (Switzerland)
Production Company: Seeland Filmproduktion GmbH / Switzerland
YELLOW CHRYSANTHEMUM - 1st feature film (fiction)
Logline: amidst the festivities of the 1998 world cup, Erika, a Japanese-Brazilian teenager living on the border between two worlds, faces the prejudices linked to her identity and struggles with unresolved grief over her best friend’s disappearance when she was 7.
Writer/Director: André Hayato Saito (Brazil)
Producer: Mayra Faour Auad (Brazil)
Production Company: MyMama Entertainment / Brazil
The selection is featured in the dedicated Screen International article.
FeatureLab 2024 is organised by TorinoFilmLab - National Museum of Cinema and co-funded by Creative Europe - MEDIA Sub-programme of the European Union, in partnership with the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, which is planning to host the 1st residential workshop.