Eight Filmmakers, Eight Countries, One Big Idea: Pop Up Film Residency's 2026 Cohort
TL;DR: The Pop Up Film Residency revealed its 2026 class at the Cannes Marché du Film this week — eight filmmakers from Iran, Ethiopia, Lithuania, Japan, Rwanda/Switzerland, Slovenia, Canada, and Palestine will spend residencies across Europe developing their next projects. Since its 2018 launch, the program has placed more than 150 filmmakers in individualized mentorships. None of these projects are streaming yet, but tracking them now is how you find tomorrow's festival breakouts.
On a Tuesday morning in Cannes, inside the Marché du Film's Village Innovation hub, the Pop Up Film Residency did something that most industry programs only claim to do: it announced a genuinely global cohort. Not global in the brochure sense. Global in the sense that this summer, an Iranian filmmaker will develop his documentary in Paris, a Japanese director will experience a French residency for the first time, and a Palestinian filmmaker will find working space in Rome while her logline — a family moving toward U.S. citizenship as Gaza burns — carries more weight than any press release could.
Eight participants. Eight countries of origin. One program that's been quietly shaping world cinema since 2018, and that most mainstream audiences have never heard of. That changes today.
What Matthieu Darras Actually Said About This Cohort
Matthieu Darras, CEO of Tatino Films and founder and director of the Pop Up Film Residency, put it plainly when speaking at the Cannes announcement. "What amazes me most about this new batch of residencies is the sheer global reach we've all built together," he said, before listing the pairings in a way that reads less like a press release and more like a dispatch from a genuinely borderless film world.
He continued: "The strength of Pop Up Film Residency has always been its people: the hosts who welcome the filmmakers in their countries, the partners like CNC, Eurimages, VIPO and the Slovenian Film Center who trust in a model built on depth rather than volume, and above all the filmmakers who bring their most urgent stories and allow us to accompany them through their cinematic journey."
That phrase — "depth rather than volume" — is the one I keep coming back to. Most industry labs measure success in throughput. Pop Up measures it in how thoroughly a single project gets supported.
The Eight Projects: Who's Going Where, and Why It Matters
Here's the full 2026 cohort at a glance, because this is the practical information you actually need:
- "Shooting Stars" (Iran) — Director Parsa Ansari, hosted in Paris. A documentary about "starred students," victims of a hidden academic purge in Iran. Supported under the Pop Up Film Residency CNC 2026, dedicated to Iranian filmmakers in partnership with France's Centre national du cinéma.
- "The Fortunate" (Ethiopia) — Producer Nahusenay Dereje, hosted in Bratislava, Slovakia. A darkly comic drama about a pastor secretly battling alcoholism who wins a car in a beer lottery. Part of the Emerging Producers strand, organized with Jihlava IDFF.
- "Beaver Song" (Lithuania/France) — Director Alanté Kavaïté, hosted in the Faroe Islands. A sensory coming-of-age film blending live action and animation. Supported under the Eurimages strand, open to experienced European women filmmakers.
- "Child, Uninvited" (Japan) — Director Mai Nakanishi, hosted in Paris. A pregnant woman, a neglected child at her door, and a moral dilemma that threatens them both. Part of the newly launched Japan Film Frontier strand, built with VIPO.
- "The Zebra's Shadow" (Rwanda/Switzerland) — Director Gaël Kamilindi, hosted in Vilnius, Lithuania. A trauma-recovery journey that begins at a rave and ends in Rwanda. Supported under the Focus CoPro strand, open to short filmmakers developing feature debuts.
- "We Are Still Screaming" and "Forbidden Fruit" (Slovenia) — Directors August Braatz and Urška Djukić Lecamus respectively, heading to Bratislava and Fårö Island, Sweden. The Next Wave Genre Slovenia strand, backed by the Slovenian Film Center, supports both.
- "Reverend" (Canada) — Director Harley Chamandy, hosted at Lago, Italy. A former Formula One world champion turned Catholic priest, faith tested by a Tibetan waitress in the Swiss Alps. On Demand strand, for filmmakers with at least two features already made.
- "America is Behind the Door" (Palestine) — Director Laila Abbas, hosted in Rome. A Palestinian family in an American suburb, inching toward citizenship while Gaza burns. The Wildcard strand, designed specifically for filmmakers from countries in political unrest.
A Program Built on Lineage, Not Hype
Since launching in 2018, the Pop Up Film Residency has delivered more than 150 artistic residencies to filmmakers worldwide, according to Variety's reporting from Cannes. That's not a vanity number — it represents a consistent throughput of roughly 20 to 25 residencies per year across a network spanning Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. And the alumni track record backs it up: past Pop Up residents have gone on to screen at Berlinale, Locarno, and IDFA, with several alumni projects (including titles developed during the program's 2020 and 2021 pandemic-era cycles) landing distribution deals with MUBI and Dogwoof within twelve months of their festival premieres.
Each residency is tailored to a single project, not a filmmaker's general career. Most include a three-week onsite stay followed by at least a year of continued mentorship. The host network is what makes this structurally different from a grant or a lab: a filmmaker isn't just given money and told to get on with it. They're placed with a specific practitioner, in a specific country, for a specific creative reason.
The 2026 cohort has institutional backing from CNC (France's national film center), Eurimages (the Council of Europe's co-production fund), VIPO (the Japanese audiovisual production organization), and the Slovenian Film Center. That's four distinct funding bodies across four different national/supranational frameworks. Hard to say if any other residency program in the world currently coordinates that many institutional partners in a single annual cycle.
Movie OTT has been tracking emerging international cinema across its global streaming database, and the pipeline from programs like Pop Up Film Residency into festival premiere slots — and eventually onto OTT platforms in India, the US, and Europe — is one of the most reliable patterns in world cinema right now.
Why This Cohort Signals Something Bigger Than a Residency Announcement
The honest editorial take here: the 2026 cohort isn't just an impressive list of diverse projects. It's a direct rebuke to the post-pandemic consolidation that saw most major streaming platforms dramatically cut their international acquisitions budgets.
Netflix and Amazon both scaled back on non-English acquisitions in 2023 and 2024. The gap that created didn't disappear. It got filled by exactly the kind of mid-tier international festival circuit that programs like Pop Up Film Residency feed. Most trade coverage treats residency announcements like this as soft news, a feel-good diversity story; the sharper read is that Pop Up is now functioning as a de facto development arm for the arthouse distribution pipeline that streamers abandoned. When Netflix pulled back from buying three or four non-English festival titles per quarter, someone had to keep those projects alive through development. Programs like this one did. That's not charity work — that's infrastructure.
The part I'm most curious about is "America is Behind the Door." Laila Abbas's premise — a Palestinian family pursuing American citizenship as Gaza burns, framed as domestic dark comedy — is the kind of project that will either get a rapturous festival debut or face serious distribution friction depending on the political climate when it's finished. That tension is baked into the logline. It's not incidental to the film; it is the film.
Compare that to something like "The Zone of Interest" (Jonathan Glazer, 2023), which also used domestic claustrophobia to contain an enormous historical horror. Abbas's film sounds like it's working a similar register, but from inside the experience rather than observing it from outside. That's a meaningful distinction.
How Indian Audiences and OTT Platforms Connect to This Pipeline
None of the 2026 Pop Up Film Residency projects are available to stream yet — they're in development, not distribution. But the pipeline from this program to Indian OTT platforms is real, and worth mapping for readers who want to get ahead of it.
Films developed through European residency programs with Eurimages and CNC backing frequently end up on:
- MUBI India — which has become the primary Indian streaming home for world cinema festival titles, including many Berlinale and Cannes selections
- Netflix India — which still acquires select international documentary and drama titles, particularly those with strong human rights or social justice themes
- SonyLIV — which has expanded its international arthouse section in the past two years
- Prime Video India — acquisition-dependent, but active in international documentary
Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker is the practical tool here: once these films begin their festival runs and pick up distribution deals, streaming availability across Indian and global platforms will be updated there in real time. The tracker covers Netflix, Prime Video, Hotstar, JioCinema, SonyLIV, and Zee5 across regions.
For Indian audiences specifically, "Shooting Stars" (the documentary about Iran's academic purge) and "The Zebra's Shadow" (the Rwanda trauma narrative) feel like the two most likely candidates for MUBI India acquisition, based on the platform's established appetite for politically engaged documentary and personal essay film. "Beaver Song," with its animation-live action hybrid format, might find a home on Netflix India if it picks up a significant festival award.
Regional language dubbing is unlikely for most of these titles at the development stage, but subtitled streaming in Hindi and Tamil has become standard practice for MUBI India and Netflix India's international acquisitions.
What to Watch For in the Months Ahead
The 2026 residencies run across the European summer, which puts first cuts and development milestones roughly in the September-to-December window. Festival submission deadlines for Berlinale 2027 (typically November) and Sundance 2027 (August-September) mean some of these projects could be in competition within 18 months.
Watch for "America is Behind the Door" and "Shooting Stars" in particular — both carry the kind of urgent political specificity that festival programmers have been actively seeking since 2024. "Child, Uninvited" (Japan) also stands out as a potential Berlinale Competition contender given Japan's strong recent track record in Berlin (Ryusuke Hamaguchi's run from "Drive My Car" through "Evil Does Not Exist" essentially reopened the door for Japanese auteur cinema at A-list European festivals).
Movie OTT will update streaming availability for all eight projects as distribution deals are confirmed. For now, the program's full archive of past residents — more than 150 films since 2018 — offers a clear picture of where these projects are likely to land.
Closing Update: The Cannes Announcement and What Comes Next
The Pop Up Film Residency's 2026 cohort was formally unveiled on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at the Cannes Marché du Film's Village Innovation space, as reported by Variety. Residencies begin this summer across Paris, the Faroe Islands, Vilnius, Bratislava, Fårö Island, Lago (Italy), and Rome. The program continues to operate under Matthieu Darras's direction through Tatino Films. No trailer or finished cut exists for any of the eight projects yet — that's the point. These are seeds, not harvests.
For streaming availability updates as these films move through festivals and into distribution, Movie OTT has the current picture across all major platforms and regions.
