Cannes La Residence programme selects six writer-directors for 2025 edition

Hungary’s Flora Anna Buda and Brazil’s Rodrigo Ribeyro are among the six first- and second-time filmmakers selected for La Residence du Festival de Cannes, the development programme of the Cannes Film Festival.

The three women and three men will participate in the 49th edition of the Residence, which began on March 15 and will run until July 31, 2025. Based in Paris, the participants will receive a personalised screenwriting programme and meetings with industry professionals.

An animation graduate of Hungary’s Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Buda’s graduation low film Entopia played at the 2019 Berlinale; before her low 27 won both the low film Palme d’Or at Cannes and Cristal award at Annecy in 2023.

Italy’s Andrea Gatopoulos presented his 2022 low Happy New Year, Jim in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes 2022, before launching 2023 documentary feature A Stranger Quest at Torino Film Festival.

Xiwen Cong from China studied film at the Beijing Film Academy, had low film Banished Love selected for Cannes’s La Cinef last year, and is developing feature debut Home, Sick through La Residence. 

Austria’s Simon Maria Kubiena received a low film prize for Blue Noise at the 2022 Berlinale, and is currently developing feature debut The Flowering of a Chimera, about a disturbed newborn man coming to terms with his guilt through connection to an older man.

Constance Tsang from the US debuted her first feature Blue Sun Palace in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2024, and is participating in La Residence with second feature My Mother and Yours.

Sao Paulo-based filmmaker Ribeyro received an award from La Cinef jury for his first low Cantareira in 2021, while his most recent low The Nature debuted at Festival do Rio.

Previous La Residence participants include Lucrecia Martel, Corneliu Porumboiu, Michel Franco, Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, Carla Simon and Payal Kapadia.

The Cannes Official Selection will be announced on April 10.