Matthieu Darras – First Cut Lab

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Matthieu Darras, director of First Cut Lab.   

Matthieu Darras founded First Cut Lab to help filmmakers and producers in one of the most difficult steps in the making of their films: the editing process. As a result of this lab’s success, First Cut+ is born, a follow-up on this help chain, regarding this time, the promotion and communication part, including the festival strategy. 8 films will be participating to First Cut+ whose Head is Ilaria Gomarasca, former Festival Manager at Pyramide International and three industry awards will be given: Orka Film Award, Sub-Ti and Sub-Ti Access award and Connecting the Dots award.

First Cut+ is a new program created for boosting the competitiveness and marketability of feature films that previously participated in First Cut Lab. The program will be launched in 2020 through a close cooperation with two dynamic & well-established film industry platforms: Trieste’s When East Meets West and Karlovy Vary IFF’s Eastern Promises Industry Days. Films developed through partner programs MIDPOINT Feature Launch and LIM – Less is More are also eligible to participate. First Cut+ is the only new action that received financial support from the Access to Markets scheme of Creative Europe’s MEDIA program this year. First Cut+ consists in the promotion of a portfolio of 16 fiction feature films at the stage of post-production, predominantly from countries with a low production capacity (at least 75% of the films) and with a focus on Central & Eastern Europe. The range of films will be large: from both debut & experienced directors, small and larger budgets. 8 films – half of the portfolio – are promoted during the winter session at Trieste’s When East Meets West (January 2020), and another half during the summer session, at Karlovy Vary IFF’s Eastern Promises Industry Days (early July 2020), enabling to welcome most eligible projects, no matter the timeline of their production. Participating projects will have 3 days of consultations on promotion followed by a Works-in-progress session.

To discover more about First Cut, click here.