Cannes Focus COPRO Selects 7 Projects With ‘Bold, Distinctive Visions’

It’s time: Cannes’ Focus COPRO, devoted to first function movies, has introduced this yr’s seven tasks.

That features “A Summer season Story” (Germany) directed by Berthold Wahjudi, “Algiers Haze” (France) by Sarra Ryma, Gaël Kamilindi’s “The Zebra’s Shadow” (Switzerland), Laura Obradors’ “The Woodworm” (Spain), Alexandra Matheou’s “Shibboleth” (Cyprus and Greece), “The Snail Automation” by Thien An Nguyen (Vietnam, South Korea) and Dean Wei’s “The Apple Doesn’t Fall…” (China, Germany).

“After a exceptional 2025 version, marked by an exceptionally numerous and promising vary of tasks, we’re delighted to current one other bold, sturdy and promising choice of seven tasks led by filmmakers with daring and distinctive visions. These tasks discover territories as diversified as Vietnam, Rwanda, Cyprus, China, and naturally Europe – a key driving drive in worldwide co-production,” Florian Fernandez, head of SFC and Rendez-vous Trade, advised Selection. 

“Among the many debut function tasks, a number of are represented by filmmakers chosen in Cannes this yr with their quick movies – which lies on the very coronary heart of this system. Whether or not it’s within the Official Choice (Thien An Nguyen), Semaine de la Critique (Berthold Wahjudi and Sarra Ryma) or Administrators’ Fortnight (Alexandra Matheou), these filmmakers embody the spirit of the initiative.”

Wei just lately received a Tiger quick award at IFFR. Kamilindi Berlin’s Teddy Award for finest quick movie. Obradors’ movie was chosen in collaboration with ECAM Industria’s La Incubadora. 

Directed by Berthold Wahjudi, German comedy “A Summer season Story” focuses on a 13-year-old Siegfried. Small for his age and the one Asian child in his German college, he tries to impress his a lot taller crush Charlotte by taking part in the category clown. However when Yuan, a shorter and even funnier Chinese language-German boy arrives and attracts her consideration, Siegfried all of a sudden sees his personal insecurities mirrored again at him. 

“Although this very private story offers with political themes like migration and nationalism, it is usually a tribute to the teenager films I cherished as a child. I need this to be a comedy that’s each entertaining and subversive – my anti-assimilation manifesto, however advised like a pubescent joke,” mentioned Wahjudi.

It’s produced by Jonas Egert for If… Productions Movie.

“Algiers Haze” by Sarra Ryma – produced by Julie Mathieu-Moreau for Colours Movies – follows Rayane and Ahmed, two 18-year-old Algerians, who wander between an oil base and the desert. When dromedaries overrun the bottom, they observe them throughout the margins. 

“I wish to movie this second simply earlier than departure, already steeped within the nostalgia for what we’re shedding. The desert replaces the gang, silence shapes our bodies. Youth is wandering, displaced by territory, need and loss. Observe the dromedaries; let the movie drift towards the invisible of exile,” mentioned Ryma. Will probably be shot within the Sahara Desert.

“Shibboleth,” a co-production between Cyprus and Greece, sees a surrogate mom who joins the couple anticipating her child on a trip. As a love triangle quietly takes form, she is confronted with the emotional value of surrogacy and the conclusion that her position doesn’t all the time finish at delivery.

“Inside the universe of this island, the story unfolds in a spot that appears to have defeated dying; or so its individuals imagine,” famous director Alexandra Matheou. 

“For so long as I can bear in mind, my existential nervousness across the topic of dying has been a relentless shadow. This is the reason I created a playground the place I might ask: if everlasting life have been attainable, would it not really make life higher? Or would it not unravel all the things we predict we find out about residing?”

Tonia Mishiali is producing for Bark Like a Cat Movies, with Home made Movies coproducing. 

Spain’s “The Woodworm” is in regards to the teenage daughter of a well known painter who discovers her father’s unsettling artistic obsessions as she develops an intense, deep relationship with a international change pupil staying at their dwelling.

“Impressed by the lifetime of my finest buddy, the movie immerses us in a pivotal summer time within the lifetime of a young person who has grown up in a hostile, male-dominated atmosphere,” mentioned director Laura Obradors. The movie is produced by Sergio Adrià (Espurna Movies).

“Haunted by the absent and ambiguous determine of her father, his affect shapes the best way she navigates each need and guilt.”

“The Zebra’s Shadow,” set in 1994, is about Pacifique. At a rave, he’s overwhelmed by a traumatic flashback that begins to disclose a troubled previous. As fragments of buried recollections resurface in his goals, he units out for Rwanda, a spot the place historical past has tried to erase him. 

“We observe Pacifique’s intimate but large quest to reclaim a fractured previous formed by colonial violence. We discover how absence, reminiscence, and inheritance outline identification, belonging, and transmission throughout generations,” famous director Gaël Kamilindi. Aline Schmid and Cécile Tollu-Polonowski produce for Beauvoir Movies.

“Pacifique confronts erased histories to know what he can cross on, reworking a private search right into a collective reckoning with fact, exile, and return,” added Kamilindi.

Dean Wei affords one thing totally different with the comedy-musical “The Apple Doesn’t Fall…,” which he described as a “satirical portrait of the common Chinese language one-child household.” 

It sees Xiaoliu, a school dropout, returning dwelling from overseas after all of a sudden shedding the power to talk. However nothing is because it was. Her father has been made redundant, her mom levels the phantasm of unity, and her grandmother finds extra consolation in a employed caretaker than her family. 

“By means of a sequence of absurd occasions, we observe them from a distance, like creatures of their pure habitat. Their lives shift from the unremarkable to the downright banal as they slip out and in of their inherited roles.”

Jiaqi Liu produces for The O Eye.

“The Snail Automation” is produced by Thao Quiengg Nguyen Doan (Kontribute) and co-produced by CJ Vietnam and East Movies.

Director Thien An Nguyen mentioned: “By means of a satirical and allegorical lens, I wish to discover a world the place individuals stay chained to antiquated dogmas whereas desperately making an attempt to invent new types of religion.” 

Within the story, after evading a homicide cost as a result of the police refuse to imagine his shopper was changed into a snail, a hustler turns the absurd idea right into a cult-like service, scamming lonely seniors out of their life financial savings underneath the guise of non secular transformation.

“The movie is a composite portrait of a youthful technology struggling to search out its footing in a hyper-consumerist, superficial society. Concurrently, it holds a mirror to grim realities in my nation.”