The first selection committee of 2026 of Arte France Cinéma, chaired by Olivier Père, has decided to commit to co-production and pre-purchase agreements for six new film projects. Among them is the upcoming feature by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, titled Soleil Blafard. Ceylan won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2014 for Winter Sleep and has received multiple awards at the French festival.

Ceylan’s new film, currently in the casting phase and scheduled to shoot from early June to late August in Turkey, will explore the distance that time and silence create between people through the relationship between a father and his daughter, marked by both love and weariness. The story follows Sabri, a man living alone on the outskirts of Ankara, who accepts an invitation from his daughter, based in Istanbul, to spend a few days with her and her young son at a seaside house. After the initial joy of their reunion fades, tensions begin to emerge, bringing long-buried resentments to the surface. The film is being produced by the Paris-based company Memento.

Arte France Cinéma will also back Santo Subito by Bertrand Bonello, currently shooting in Poland and Italy until mid-May, with a cast including Andrzej Chyra, Cezary Zak, Charlotte Rampling, Adam Bessa and Mark Ruffalo.

The company will also support The Grand Serpent, Anne Fontaine’s 20th feature film, adapted from the novel of the same name by Pierre Lemaître. Set in 1973, the film follows a female hitwoman whose erratic behaviour begins to worry her employers. The cast will include Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Poelvoorde and Raphaël Personnaz, with filming scheduled for next winter. The project is produced by F comme Film, alongside La Company de la Seine and Artémis Production.

Another selected project is La Foudre by brothers Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu, a Nord-Ouest Films production set to begin shooting in the spring. Starring Hafsia Herzi, Arieh Worthalter and Sara Giraudeau, the film is a loose adaptation of the novel by Pierric Bailly and centres on Jeanne, a shepherdess in a valley in the Pyrenees who investigates a former friend accused of murder, finding herself drawn into an unexpected story of passion.

Also among the selected projects is a debut feature: Kyushu Moon by Stéphanie Argerich, starring Alba Rohrwacher. The story follows a recently divorced Swiss journalist who travels to the Japanese island of Kyushu to investigate male celibacy in a country facing a declining population. An unexpected encounter will challenge her convictions. The film will be produced by Les Films du Bélier in collaboration with Intermezzo Films and is set to shoot from mid-September to late October 2026.

Finally, Arte France Cinéma will support the animated documentary Red Zone by Ukrainian director Iryna Tsilyk, which will depict a day in the life of the filmmaker and poet in Kyiv during wartime. The project is a co-production between Vivement Lundi!, Moon Man and a_BAHN, with visual design by Flora Anna Buda.

Arte France Cinéma also continues to support upcoming projects by filmmakers such as Andreï Zviaguintsev, Albert Serra, Kaouther Ben Hania, Pawel Pawlikowski, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Kornél Mundruczó, Mikhaël Hers, Hlynur Pálmason, Kantemir Balagov, Mia Hansen-Løve, Robert Guédiguian, Yann Gonzalez, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, Blerta Basholli, Élise Girard, Justyna Tafel, Zou Jing, Chabname Zaria, Marine Atlan, Jérémy Comte, Hu Wei, Vincent Le Port, Wesley Rodrigues, Masha Kondakova, Charlotte Le Bon, Philippe Lesage, Kateryna Gornostai, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, and the duo Romain Renard and Fursy Teyssier.