05/12/2016 - The 19th session will support debut features by Cristèle Alves Meira, Emilie Carpentier, Gaëlle Denis, Tamara Erde, Camille Lugan and Alexe Poukine

Selected by a jury presided over this year by Catherine Corsini, six young female directors have been chosen for the 19^th session of the Emergence direction residency, which will give them the chance to film sequences for their debut features with the patronage of an established director, artistic support, and professional production means.

Cristèle Alves Meira has been chosen with Alma Viva, the plot for which centres around a 15-year-old teenager who leaves France as she does every summer to go and spend the holidays in the Portuguese village she’s from. But her beloved grandmother dies and she has to deal with her hysterical family, which refuses to pay for the headstone… (production: Gaëlle Mareschi for Fluxus Films).

Emilie Carpentier will be working on L'Horizon (co-screenwriters: Cécile Vargaftig, Asmar Abdillah and Dany Bomou), which follows the misfortunes of a young girl, originally from the Comoros, as she attends a vocational college in the Parisian suburbs. She’s itching to escape her everyday existence, and feels her way along the path to her future, with juvenile revolt, reflections on society, and a romantic encounter along the way.

Gaëlle Denis has been chosen with La fille de l'estuaire (co-screenwriters: Amber Trentham and Chris Andrews), the main character of which is a fanciful 10-year-old girl who lives with her broken family on a farm near an estuary, where she finds an injured woman with whom she enters into a strange relationship… (production Ohna Falbi for Life to Life Films and Nathalie Algazi for La Voie Lactée).

Tamara Erde, meanwhile, is working on Anna (co-screenwriters: Yossi Aviram and Raphaëlle Desplechin), which follows a 20-year-old woman who leaves Israel and heads to Paris in the hope of finding the father she never knew, a quest for identity that propels her into the heart of an investigation by Mossad (production: Nathalie Vallet for Les Films du Poisson). 

Also among the residency winners is Camille Lugan with Fun, fun, fun, which centres around a young 30-year-old woman who works as a courier in Paris in total freedom, until she meets a Colombian who turns her world upside down (produced by Stéphanie Bermann and Alexis Dulguerian for Domino Films). 

Last but not least, Alexe Poukine has been chosen with Les Sangliers (partnering up with Marion Desseigne Ravel on the screenplay), which follows the chance reunion in Paris of two brothers, one of whom has ended up living on the streets (production: Grégoire Debailly for Geko Films). 

Since it was set up by Elisabeth Depardieu, Emergence has notably supported debut features by Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Mia Hansen-Love, Pierre Schoeller, Katell Quillévéré, Alice Winocour, Léa Fehner, Julie Bertuccelli, Joachim Lafosse, Antonin Peretjatko, Elie Wajeman, Renaud Fély, Antoine Cuypers, Farid Bentoumi, Morgan Simon, Sacha Wolff and Caroline Deruas.

(Translated from French)