TFL Next – Screens of Tomorrow: Fiction, Too, Can Help Envision a Better World

Co-created by Sparknews and TorinoFilmLab, with financial support from the European Union as part of an Erasmus+ program, this new lab aims to equip those writing tomorrow’s fiction to present a world more sensitive to environmental and social issues on screen.

“There’s a quote we love. It says that culture, and cinema in particular, has the power to ‘prescenarize behaviors,’” confides Alma Gavazzi, project manager in the culture hub at Sparknews. “Yves Citton, philosopher,” enthusiastically adds her colleague Alicia Beranger, an analyst specializing in awareness-raising methodologies and part of the company’s positive innovation hub. Citton’s quote sends back to an essential, well-known notion: Life imitating art.

The first stirrings of the project

Rooted in the belief that fiction plays a significant role in changing reality, Sparknews joined forces with TorinoFilmLab (internationally renowned for its support to emerging filmmakers) to build together TFL Next – Screens of Tomorrow, a program designed to help screenwriters bring to their feature films more inclusion, diversity, and a sensitivity to the environment and the climate crisis.

 

At Sparknews, almost everything revolves around the power of storytelling and narratives, and how they can shape the present and the future of our societies. In over 12 years of existence, the B Corp has spearheaded its share of programs to raise awareness about ecological and societal issues, working with a multitude of entities – media outlets, organizations, companies, and, more recently, the film industry. In 2022, it notably launched the Screens of Tomorrow guide, a self-administered questionnaire meant for and co-constructed with audiovisual and film professionals. First presented in French, then adapted into English, the tool aims to serve as “a means for reflecting upon writing and storyline development routines to create new reference points for viewers” and “bring a more inclusive society to the screen.” It also addresses sustainability and environment-related issues in three versions (for the writing, production, and distribution stages). To promote this collective effort, Sparknews presented the guide at key film industry events, such as the Marché du Film (Film Market) at the Cannes Film Festival or the Venice Production Bridge, the film market of the Venice International Film Festival. That’s where, in 2023, the company linked up with the Turin-based laboratory, leading up eventually to the creation of this joint workshop.

 

The “pilot” edition of the TFL Next – Screens of Tomorrow lab kicked off at the beginning of June 2024. For three months, 33 young writer-directors, producers, and story editors from 17 countries explored the power of storytelling and the impact of cinema on how we imagine the future. All under the tutelage of five film professionals carefully chosen by TorinoFilmLab for their expertise and to enrich the themes covered by the 18 feature film projects selected. 

 

The aim is to go “one step further than the theory” so that the knowledge shared by Sparknews enables participants to “really grasp these issues in their own work, in their own daily lives,” explains Alma.

Let the adventure begin !

It’s an ambitious venture and one that has been put together in a relatively short span of time. The project was green-lit only in February 2024, once the European funding (as part of Erasmus+) was secured. Three months of preparation followed – two of which Sparknews dedicated to the pedagogical material and organizing the different sessions to ensure a variety of topics and formats for this online lab.

 

Around 20 hours of lectures, exercises and discussions spread over two weeks, with contributions from experts such as environmental filmmaker Cyril Dion (“Tomorrow,” “Animal”), permaculture and agroecology specialist Perrine Bulgheroni, and producer Josh Cockcroft, who has co-founded Climate Spring, an organization that seeks to “use the power of storytelling in film and TV to create new narratives for the climate crisis.”

List of speakers programmed at the conference

“We decided to give them a brief overview of the crises we’re going through. So the ecological crisis, with a focus on energy, material footprint, over-consumption, the relationship with nature, and all the living things today, which is completely at odds with how humans live today. But also issues around inclusion, talking about the inequalities and systems of domination that are perpetuated today, and which can also be represented in film,” Alicia explains. 

Then TorinoFilmLab ran a week of coaching sessions focused on the participating filmmakers’ feature projects before giving them a two-month breathing space to work on their synopses on their own, at their own pace.

Building stories and bridging perspectives: a journey of reflection and creative growth

The participants from the TFL Next’s first edition (1)

Throughout the program, participants had the chance to work in large groups, and smaller ones (3 to 4 projects, with a mentor and a trainee story editor), as well as one-on-one. “It was such a good combination,” says Judie Yang, a Taiwanese writer-director based in Japan. She joined the workshop with her first feature film project, The Number-One Girl. Inspired by her experience of migration to the United States, the film follows the adventures of a young Taiwanese teen who moves to Colorado, USA, with her family. She quickly sets out to become the most popular girl at the high school she has just joined, navigating a world filled with sexist and racist stereotypes. In the group sessions, Judie found support and reassurance. Through her exchanges with her French tutor, Lucie Trémolières, and the Israeli trainee story editor who accompanied her, Yotam Shazar, she was able to get constructive and specific feedback that helped guide her. 

 

Nicole Gullane, a Brazilian writer-director who was in that same group, concurs. 

“ I was pleasantly surprised by the depth we were able to achieve in analyzing both my project and the others, especially considering the limited time we had,” she writes by email.

The participants from the TFL Next’s first edition (2)

Both applaud the groups’ diversity and the “tremendous” value it added to their experience and project. “I had the opportunity to collaborate with people from different continents, like Europe and Asia, on my South American project,” says Nicole. Her project, Angélica, focuses on a trucker whose life is turned upside down by an encounter with a trans woman “who relies on his kindness for survival.” He finds himself questioning his convictions and redefining what it means to be a family to him.

“As a screenwriter, my goal is to portray a more nuanced and humanized Brazil on screen, different from the typical depictions we often see in fiction. I want to present rich, complex characters living within a socio-economic and cultural context that reflects both positive and negative aspects. Hearing perspectives from people in Greece, Taiwan, and France, even at this early stage of the film, helps me understand how my country is perceived abroad,” she adds. Some food for thought.

The participants from the TFL Next’s first edition (3)

Judie, too, came out of the workshop with much to reflect on in relation to her project, but also on a slightly more “philosophical” level regarding cinema and what she’d like to contribute with her filmmaking.

“There was a session where people talked about how you have to build a world that you really want to live in, even for the films you make. And that really got out of the pit hole. I was so invested in what [the main character] was going through, what could happen to her, but I hadn’t thought about what she wanted to see.” This got her thinking more broadly: “So I was like, okay, I’m making this film for the future generation, a young audience, and I want them to see a good world in my film.”

And to do so, it’s all about the details.

“I really liked it when Lucie told us that it’s not about changing the story, it’s more about how we present the story. Maybe the way we present it can motivate the audience to think about the tools we use. She mentioned, for example, how we always show people driving cars, right? But why don’t they just use the tram? It would be more eco-friendly. Why do you automatically feel like a car is the best choice? It’s connected to this philosophical thing – you are creating the world that you want the audience to feel that is possible, and so, I should be even more deliberate in all these choices.” 

Tutor Lucie Trémolières on empowering filmmakers to tackle climate issues

A writer-director herself, Lucie Trémolières is a fervent advocate of “eco-production” (sustainable production) and the need for cinema to feature more stories where environmental and ecological issues appear in one way or another. A couple of years ago, she was a participant in one of the TorinoFilmLab labs before eventually becoming a collaborator and now a mentor. She hopes to help other filmmakers better include sustainability and climate change-related issues in their work. “I think people use stories to make sense of the world, and today, we’re not really helping them because we don’t talk to them about it. We don’t talk to them about it in a way that gets into the emotional distress that comes with it. So people feel alone in this. I also think that writers are afraid to go that far. They don’t feel legitimate. It’s a bit complicated. And so we’re missing out on a lot of projects that never even see the day… Because the writers are afraid, because the producers are afraid, because the distributors are afraid. And so we end up seeing on the screen the same ecological stories.” Hence her commitment to support different stories and points of view emerge.

“I don’t think there are many places where you can say, ‘These questions are important to me, but I don’t have all the answers,’” she says. “We’re in the process of deconstructing highly complicated things that have been stuck in our eyes and in our brains for hundreds of years, and we can’t know everything right away.” She points out the lack of training opportunities and initiatives around sustainability and the environment in the film industry, particularly in France, while subjects such as artificial intelligence are rapidly taking over (ironically, AI’s environmental impact is consequential). She believes that the TFL Next – Screens of Tomorrow is one of those rare opportunities to raise awareness, allowing filmmakers to learn more about the environment, the climate crisis, but also from each other, and on an international scale at that. “There was this kind of attentiveness and kindness that people had with each other, and a need to share and connect. It was really nice.”

A trainee story editor’s perspective: gaining new perspectives in storytelling and sustainability

Yotam Shazar, a producer who took part in the workshop as a trainee story editor, agrees. He was particularly impressed with the discussions between the writers on each other’s projects.

“You could see them suddenly understand that a certain kind of humor, which is, for example, very Greek in nature, works completely for someone from Brazil or Germany or Taiwan. Or that the nuances of a character and the drama she experienced and caused her to be a certain way, people totally get that because they recognize themselves in the experience despite the [cultural] differences.”

The program allowed Yotam to hone his skills as a story editor, to learn from these cultural exchanges, but also to familiarize himself with new concepts and learn facts and figures about nature and the environment. So many things that he “didn’t know [he] didn’t know,” as he puts it. One of his highlights was discovering the richness of soils, which he did not expect. He was also surprised by the concept of planetary boundaries, and all the ramifications of causes and effects that it encompasses. “Of course, I was already familiar with climate change, but I realized that there were so many more aspects at play that we need to think about.”

What now ?

A couple of months after the lab ended, the participants we spoke to were continuing on with their projects. Judie Yang decided to give herself a year to further grow her project’s story, Nicole Gullane already applied to other labs to move on to the next phase of her film’s development, and Yotam, now a story editor (as well as a producer), had in the works collaborations on three films and a TV series. As for Sparknews and TorinoFilmLab, their teams are already looking ahead to 2025, hoping to be able to renew the experience. They want the next TFL Next – Screens of Tomorrow to be even more diverse, more international, and therefore better and richer for participants. 

Between the success of this first edition and the passion of everyone involved, it seems well within reach. As long as they secure the necessary funding to run the operation. They have submitted an application with Erasmus+. Now all that is left to do is wait and see if January 2025 comes with some good news for this program.

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