CASA CINE 2024 - SCREENWRITERS

SERENA Productions and La Napoule Art Foundation are pleased to present the screenwriters who will take part in the next edition of the CASA CINE residency. Our jury, composed by Abdelkrim Bahloul, Pedro Borges, Melody Cooper, Anna Glogowski and Mathieu Sapin - selected the four candidates who will be joining us in May at Château de La Napoule to work on the writing of their first or second feature film projects.

This year, the residency will host writer-directors Miao Yu (China), Pascal Tessaud (France), Julia Castro (Argentina) and Amaya Sumpsi (Portugal/Spain).

Miao Yu

Writer-Director
China

Feature fiction

The Sixth Chime

Miao YU grew up in China before going to study cinema in France, where she graduated from La Fémis in 2020. She has directed six short films which were screened at various festivals around the world, including The Dissonant Echo of Desire, The Elusive Joy of Labor and 24’58 On the Way to Dulpokanova, which won the best short film award at HiShorts! Film Festival in China. Her feature film project Moving received the writing fund from CNC - the French National Centre for Cinema.

In her films, Miao Yu explores the hidden fragments of reality to reveal the absurdity of contemporary life through narrative choices that subvert convention: she is particularly keen to offer a nuanced view of society and human relationships.

During her time at CASA CINE, she will be writing The Sixth Chime, a fiction set in a boarding school in China, inviting us to contemplate human nature, the inner world of teenagers and their relationships, aspirations, doubts and struggles.

Pascal Tessaud

Writer-Director
France

Feature fiction

Azur

Pascal Tessaud is a French director and screenwriter. After studying literature and cinema at the Université Paris X Nanterre, he directed four short fiction films: Noctambules with Hiam Abbass, L'été de Noura, Faciès, and La Ville Lumière, which was selected for numerous festivals - such as the Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Hollyshorts of Los Angeles, Paris tout court… - having won Grand Prize awards in Warsaw, New York, Mexico and Toronto, as well as the Audience Award at the CoLCoA in Los Angeles. In 2014 he wrote, produced and directed his first feature film Brooklyn, selected for the ACID section at the Cannes Festival, which won Grand Prize at Aubagne, Miami and Hip Hop Film Festival in New York. The film was selected and screened in over 100 festivals around the world. In 2019, he directed and produced the series Paris 8, la fac Hip Hop for ARTE.

At CASA CINE, he will be working on the writing of his second feature film, Azur, a fiction which questions the torments of a generation of lost adults who rebuild themselves through love, family and friendship, set in the city of Marseille.

Julia Castro

Writer-Director
Argentina

Feature documentary

The Opposite Direction

Born in Argentina, Julia Castro studied Sound Design at ENERC (National School of Experimentation and Filmmaking) and Design of Image and Sound at National University of Buenos Aires. She has been working as a sound designer for various feature films. She also frequently collaborates with animation cinema, having worked with studios like Can Can Club and with filmmaker Juan Pablo Zaramella. As a director, she has made four animated short films: El Monstruo La Construcción, Hoy Anguila, Ukako and Sal, using different animation techniques.

In 2014, Julia Castro settled in Patagonia, where she taught at the UNRN (National University of Rio Negro). She is the co-founder of the production company Hormiga Argentina which is currently producing First Names (Los Nombres Propios) by Fernando Dominguez, a co-production with Germany and France with the support of Tribeca and the World Cinema Fund of the CNC of France.

Julia Castro is now developing her first feature film as a director, The Opposite Direction, which in 2023 was selected for Berlinale Talents and was part of the Official Pitch Selection of Sunny Side of the Doc in France. The Opposite Direction tells a forgotten story about the future, focusing on the first controlled nuclear fusion experiment in history.

Amaya Sumpsi

Writer-Director
Portugal/Spain

Feature fiction

Route 5

Amaya Sumpsi is a Spanish director and anthropologist, living and working in Portugal. Since 2017, she has been part of the coordination of NAVA – Center for Visual Anthropology and the Arts (CRIA-UNL/ISCTE), and is also a professor at ISCTE-UNL University.

Her first documentary My Fisherman, My Old Man premiered at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival (RAI-Edinburgh, 2013) and was selected for numerous documentary film festivals. In 2018, she co-directs Um Ramadão em Lisboa, a collaborative documentary that premiered at the IndieLisboa International Festival (2019). Her first feature-length film as a director, titled Between Islands (2022) received financial support from ICA and RTP, had its premiere at Cinemateca Portuguesa and was selected for festivals in Spain, France and Tunisia.

She is currently developing her second feature film, Route 5, set in a village between Spain and Portugal. In the strange mix of rhythms of its 24-hour petrol station, between the slow wandering of no-man's-land and the vertiginous rhythm of a high-speed highway, a woman who has lost her bearings rediscovers certain traces of her past.

SERENA Productions and La Napoule Art Foundation once again thank all the candidates for their applications and congratulate the participants of the 2024 edition of CASA CINE, which will take place at the Château de La Napoule, from May 10th to 29th.