The Cannes Film Festival Résidence has announced the filmmakers selected for its 52nd session, bringing together six directors in Paris to work for four and a half months on the screenplays for their first or second feature films. The new cohort includes Anna Llargués Muñoz (Spain), Vytautas Katkus (Lithuania), Dorian Jespers (Belgium), Sam Manacsa (Philippines), Ananth Subramaniam (Malaysia) and Agustina Sánchez Gavier, an Argentine filmmaker based in Germany.
The programme offers participants personalised support in developing their projects and will take place in Paris. Three of the filmmakers selected for this session are developing their debut features: Manacsa, Subramaniam and Sánchez Gavier.
The selection also includes three young European filmmakers with previous experience on the international festival circuit. Vytautas Katkus was the director of photography on Toxic, which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno in 2024, and his feature directorial debut, The Visitor, received the Best Director Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival last year. Anna Llargués Muñoz competed in Cannes’ La Cinef section in 2023 with her first short film, Crack of Dawn, while Dorian Jespers won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2020 for Sun Dog and was selected for the 2025 Directors’ Fortnight with Loynes.
Created in 2000, the Cannes Film Festival Résidence has established itself as one of the leading international programmes supporting the development of film projects. Since its creation, it has hosted more than 300 filmmakers from around 60 countries, many of whom have subsequently built significant international careers.
Its former participants include Carla Simón, Payal Kapadia, László Nemes, Lukas Dhont, Lucrecia Martel, Kornél Mundruczó, Corneliu Porumboiu, Karim Aïnouz, Amat Escalante, Nadine Labaki and Nadav Lapid.
The new cohort joins those of the previous four sessions, which included filmmakers such as Saulé Bliuvaité, Harry Lighton, Emma Branderhorst, Joecar Hanna, Mansi Maheshwari, Maksym Nakonechnyi, Federico Luis, Laís Santos Araújo, Flóra Anna Buda, Andrea Gatopoulos, Sofia Alaoui and Theo Montoya, among others.