Anna Llargués Muñoz © Raquel Barrera / Vytautas Katkus © Audrius Solominas / Sam Manacsa © Polo Boado / Ananth Subramaniam © Adrian Wong / Agustina Sánchez Gavier © Francisco Muñoz Berrios / Dorian Jespers © Lina Laraki

La Résidence
05.10.26

Six filmmakers. Six new films in the making.

They come from Spain, Lithuania, the Philippines, Malaysia, Argentina and Belgium. Anna Llargués Muñoz, Vytautas Katkus, Sam Manacsa, Ananth Subramaniam, Agustina Sánchez Gavier and Dorian Jespers are joining La Résidence du Festival de Cannes in Paris.

For six months, the Festival provides them with a unique space to support them in writing their first or second feature-length fiction film. Three women and three men, aged between 27 and 35, make up the group. Five of them are developing their first feature film.

Their backgrounds reflect six very different approaches to the art of cinema.

Catalan filmmaker Anna Llargués Muñoz presented her first short film, Trenc d’alba (Crack of Dawn), a fiction piece blending digital footage, Super 8 and archive footage, with La Cinef at the 76th Festival de Cannes.

Vytautas Katkus, a director and cinematographer based in Vilnius, works in both fiction and documentary films, and is currently developing his second feature film.

Sam Manacsa, a Filipino filmmaker whose work spans several disciplines, has notably worked in production design on several films.

Ananth Subramaniam, a Malaysian filmmaker of Tamil descent, directed the first Malaysian short film, Bleat!, ever selected for Cannes at the 2025 Critics’ Week.

Agustina Sánchez Gavier, an Argentine screenwriter and director based in Germany, saw her graduation film Nuestra Sombra (Our Own Shadow) screened at more than 70 international festivals.

Finally, Belgium’s Dorian Jespers, who trained at Le Fresnoy among other places, has directed two short films that have been screened at more than 200 festivals around the world.

Anna Llargués Muñoz © Raquel Barrera

Spain

Anna Llargues Munoz

« At this point in the writing process, after spending a long time developing an idea that began as something quite abstract, shaped by impressions, memories and fiction, I am still trying to find its form. I now feel the need to share it and open it up, allowing its ideas to evolve through the perspectives of others. La Résidence de Cannes feels like a space where this can happen. Having the time and space to devote to the film and share this stage with other filmmakers sounds really exciting. I am very much looking forward to getting started there this autumn!”

Anna Llargués Muñoz was born in Barcelona in 1999. Her debut short film, Trenc d’alba (Crack of Dawn), a fiction blending digital, Super 8 and archival footage, premiered in La Cinef Selection at the 76th Cannes Film Festival. It was also selected for the 68th Valladolid International Film Festival (Seminci), where it received a Special Mention from the Green Spike Jury. The film screened at around fifty film festivals and received multiple awards. Her second fiction short film, Àvia Peix (Grandma Fish), shot by its nine-year-old protagonist, is now starting its festival run.
She is currently developing her debut feature, De fang (Of Mud), a Spain–France–Portugal coproduction, which was granted an award at Les Arcs Talent Village and was selected for TorinoFilmLab Green Narratives.
Anna’s films explore cinema as a vessel for memory, tracing the invisible threads that connect people, different forms of life and places across time.

Vytautas Katkus

“I am delighted to be participating in and developing this particular project at la Résidence. One of the film’s central themes is community; writing the screenplay while immersed in a community of other directors is both a coincidence and a way to gain a fresh perspective on the film. Having four months to focus exclusively on the screenplay is a tremendous gift, and I hope to make productive use of this time.”

Vytautas Katkus is a director and cinematographer based in Vilnius. He graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in cinematography and works in fiction and documentary films. He shot Saule Bliuvaite’s debut movie Toxic, which won Golden Leopard at Locarno 2024 and national film award for best cinematography. As director he has made 3 short films : Community Gardens, Places, and Cherries, and showed them in many festivals (Cannes competition, Critic’s week, Venice). His debut feature film The Visitor premiered in Karlovy Vary and won best director award in 2025. He also won national awards for best screenplay, best director, and best film. He is now developing his second feature film.

Sam Manacsa

“Being part of the residency feels like an important moment for me to grow with the film and as a filmmaker. I see it as a time to focus on writing and deepen what I already know about the project through the perspectives of the people I will share the space with. I am excited to see where the film can go through conversations with other filmmakers.”

Sam Manacsa is a Filipino filmmaker whose work spans multiple disciplines. She has worked in production design for award-winning films, including Carlo Francisco Manatad’s Whether the Weather Is Fine (Locarno, 2021) and Siyou Tan’s Amoeba (TIFF, 2025). Her short film Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (2023) had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti section, while If People Such as We Cease to Exist (2016) was selected for the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival’s International Competition. She is currently developing her debut feature, The Void is Immense in Idle Hours, which was selected for the TorinoFilmLab FeatureLab. She is an alumna of the SEAFIC Seed Lab (2022), TIFF Directors’ Lab (2025), and Talents Tokyo (2025).

Ananth Subramaniam

“La Résidence, for me, is a chance to slow down, listen, and give Pray to the Thunder the space it needs to become the film it wants to be. I hope to leave not with all the answers, but with the courage to find them. More than anything, I want to return home to my punk venues, to my Tamil communities, and to the stories I have spent years trying to understand with a stronger voice. I feel an urgency now to tell these stories, while they are still mine to tell.”

Ananth Subramaniam is a Malaysian filmmaker of Tamil descent whose work explores themes of ancestral identity through the lens of post-colonial Tamil experiences. In 2025, his film Bleat! became the first Malaysian short selected at Cannes, premiering at the 64th Critics’ Week and winning the Queer Palm. The film also won the International Student Jury Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, was selected for MoMA’s New Directors/New Films program, and screened at more than 30 festivals worldwide. His latest short, Holy Crowd, premiered at 2026 Cannes Critics’ Week. His other short films include The House of Brick & Stone (2022) and Liar Land (2019), the latter of which received a Special Mention at the 73rd Locarno Film Festival. Ananth is in development for his debut feature, Pray to the Thunder, through Talents Tokyo, in collaboration with Berlinale Talents, Critics’ Week Next Step program and La Résidence du Festival de Cannes.

Agustina Sánchez Gavier

“Being part of La Résidence gives me the opportunity to step out of my everyday life and fully immerse myself in Mártires. I’m curious to see how writing in a new context might make me think differently about the story. I’m really looking forward to sharing the creative process with the other residents, exchanging ideas, and being inspired by each other’s work.”

Agustina Sánchez Gavier is an Argentinian writer and filmmaker based in Germany. She graduated from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) in 2023. Her graduation film, Nuestra Sombra (Our Own Shadow, 2024), premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight at the 77th Festival de Cannes and went on to screen at over 70 international film festivals, receiving several awards and distinctions. The film was nominated for the German Film Award and broadcast by ARTE. Nuestra Sombra grew out of the research for her debut feature, Mártires (Martyrs), currently in development.

Dorian Jespers

“These days, I mostly write in a small village. When people around me—who don’t work in the film industry—ask me what I do and I answer, “I write,” I sometimes sense a slight unease. Saying, “I’m writing for the Residency of the Festival de Cannes,” on the other hand, immediately solves the problem. It’s almost as if I had a real job.
Beyond that, it’s an immense opportunity to be able to devote several months to my film in Paris. My co-screenwriter lives there, and after working remotely for so long, simply being able to meet up in the same room should make a big difference. I’ve also always worked better when I’m not completely alone. I’m delighted at the thought of being able to write surrounded by other filmmakers, seeing how their films take shape, and getting their feedback on mine.”

Dorian Jespers (b. 1993, Brussels) is a filmmaker trained at INSAS, KASK, and Le Fresnoy. His two short films travelled widely, screening at more than 200 festivals worldwide (Cannes, Clermont, Palm Springs, Karlovy Vary…) and winning over 35 awards. Sun Dog, inspired by a surreal journey through the Russian Arctic, won the main prize in Rotterdam; Loynes, drawn from an obscure court case stretching from nineteenth-century Liverpool to contemporary China, premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight. His films combine unusual structures and bold imagery with humor, mystery and close attention to human behavior. They explore territories that are at once distant and strangely close.