The Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes Film Festival, has unveiled the four short films created for its Next Step Studio initiative from four young directors from Indonesia.

The first edition of Next Step Studio has given them a voice by enabling them to co-write and co-direct shorts. which will be screened during the 65th edition of the Critics’ Week. 

Its Next Step workshops aim to support young talent in world cinema and allow them to move from short to feature films. “Continuing the concept initiated by La Factory at the Directors’ Fortnight since 2013, the program supports the emergence of new voices in cinema around the world,” Critics’ Week organizers said. “Each year, it takes place in a different country and highlights local cinema, bringing together eight emerging directors – four local and four international – to co-write and co-direct four 15-minute short films.”

The first 10 editions explored film talent from Taiwan, Chile, Finland, Denmark, South Africa, Lebanon, Tunisia, five Balkan countries, northern Portugal, the Philippines, and the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil. More than 80 filmmakers have participated in the program and nearly 50 first feature films have been made. 

This year’s edition, produced by Yulia Evina Bhara, Amerta Kusuma and Dominique Welinski, creator and curator of the program, is co-produced by Indra Sashi Kalanacitra, VMS Studio, Visinema Pictures, Navvaros, Entertainment, Poplicist Publicist, Salaya Yachts, Arungi Films, Prodigihouse, Titrafilm, A La Plage Studio, Jakarta Film Week, The Jakarta Provincial Government and the Ministry of Culture of Indonesia in partnership with the French Embassy in Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and ASEAN, and the French Institute Indonesia.

Here is a look at the four short films that will screen during the Critics’ Week in Cannes, which runs May 13-21.

Holy Crowd
Directors: Reza Fahriyansyah (Indonesia) and Ananth Subramaniam (Malaysia)
Indonesia, France – 2025 – 16′ – language: Indonesian

Synopsis: “After Ratna rises from the dead during her funeral, her silent body begins performing unexplained healings, turning her husband Arif into the reluctant center of a growing frenzy. As villagers, opportunists, and religious authorities descend, faith and exploitation collide, and the miracle spirals beyond control.”
Cast: Prilly Latuconsina, Yusuf Mahardika, Yudi Ahmad Tajudin, Arswendy Bening Swara
DOP: Vera Lestafa, Indonesian Cinematographers Society
Editor: Carlo Francisco Manatad

Original Wound
Directors: Shelby Kho (Indonesia) and  Sein Lyan Tun (Myanmar) 
Indonesia, France – 2026 – 14′ – language: Indonesian

Synopsis: “After their mother’s death, a brother and sister remain in the house shaped by her control, negotiating conflicting memories of abuse and care. As ritual, body, and memory intertwine, their grief exposes a deeper entrapment, one that persists beyond her absence.”
Cast: Agnes Naomi, Omara Esteghlal, Vivian Idris
DOP: Vera Lestafa, Indonesian Cinematographers Society
Editor: Carlo Francisco Manatad

Annisa
Directors: Reza Rahadian (Indonesia) and Sam Manacsa (Philippines)
Indonesia, France – 2025 – 14′ – language: Indonesian

Synopsis: “In a crowded housing complex, Anissa, a blind teenage girl navigates a world mainly shaped by sound. As a neighborhood national day celebration unfolds around her, she finds an unexpected way to be heard, reclaiming her place within the noise that surrounds her.”
Cast: Choirunnisa Fernanda, Nazira C. Noer, Shakeel Fauzi
DOP: Faozan Rizal, Indonesian Cinematographers Society
Editor: Carlo Francisco Manatad

Mothers Are Mothering
Directors: Khozy Rizal (Indonesia) and Lam Li Shuen (Singapore)
Indonesia, France – 2025 – 17′ – language: Indonesian

Synopsis: “Nia, 50, in an abusive marriage, navigates a fragmented inner world where desire, memory, and ritual intertwine. A reunion with a former lover reawakens intimacy but exposes the persistence of violence and entrapment. As reality dissolves into hallucination, she reaches for a final, elusive escape.”
Cast: Happy Salma, Asmara Abigail, Yudi Ahmad Tajudin
DOP: Deska Binarso, Indonesian Cinematographers Society
Editor: Carlo Francisco Manatad

On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark honors fringe cinema in the streaming age with midnight movies from any moment in film history.

First, the BAIT: a weird genre pick, and why we’re exploring its specific niche right now. Then, the BITE: a spoiler-filled answer to the all-important question, “Is this old cult film actually worth recommending?”

The Bait: “Before Sunrise” Meets David Lynch in the Creepiest First Date Movie Ever Made

If you’re in New York City now through June 14, you can see Dill Harcourt in “Girls” (aka Corey Stoll) and an “SNL” MVP from 2012-2022 (aka Cecily Strong, in a brilliant, full-throated dramatic performance) onstage Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre in “What Happened Was…”

It’s based on a 1994 play and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning movie directed by and starring the late, great Tom Noonan (RIP). If you can’t make it to attend this addictive and seriously warped stage adaptation, you can very easily find this underseen indie on YouTube for a skin-crawly night in. (It’s a favorite of Charlie Kaufman, who would later cast Noonan in “Synecdoche, New York,” and fans of Kaufman’s two-hander “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” will find much to love in “What Happened Was.”)

The play, and the film, revolve around paralegal Michael and executive legal assistant Jackie, co-workers at the same firm who meet for a first date at Jackie’s apartment, the same way nervous neighbors meet over a tall fence: How much damage and ruin await on the other side of the parapet if you look too closely? Over the course of an eventually boozy evening, both reveal acid-spiked truths to one another while swapping wounded badinage — one being that Jackie is the writer of truly twisted short stories that might be based on her own real trauma, and the other being that Michael is a phony and a play actor in his own life.

Shot luridly in neo-noir-streaked honest-to-god celluloid the way only indies in the ‘90s were — and perhaps with Martin Scorsese’s all-nighter “After Hours” as a touchstone — “What Happened Was” is one of those great one-night movies. Think of it as “Before Sunrise” directed by David Lynch, and a romance fueled by self-consciousness and insecurity. Vulnerability risks emotional exposure, but Michael and Jackie use a fear of intimacy as firewood to possibly spark something real, maybe the first real thing they’ve felt in their lives.

Noonan plays Michael in the film with a quiet watchfulness that contrasts Jackie’s nervy, open wound of a woman played with emotive genius by Karen Sillas. “What Happened Was” the movie plays up the creep factor by filling Jackie’s apartment with watchful porcelain dolls, positioned like voyeurs to a long-winded and eventually perverse conversation between broken people.

The centerpiece of this movie — and what blew me away in the play, as read by Strong — is the absolutely unhinged monologue Jackie delivers, reading from her short stories. (It turns out she’s a published author!) In a terrifying oner punctuated only by visualizations of it that Michael projects onto the TV, Jackie tells the story of a woman sexually abused by everyone around her, including her own parents, in a Southern Gothic-tinged Florida where she eventually “topless-danced her way West” to ward off trauma. “End of part one,” the story concludes, and our jaws are on the floor.

“What Happened Was” made a minor indie splash at the time, and reportedly, Noonan planned a schedule that he pitched to various streamers in the last years of his life. I would’ve loved to see where these two ended up — which, after that speech, is unlikely to be in each other’s arms. For now, Ian Rickson’s stage version gives an approximation of what another version of this story might look like — one where drunkenly singing along to Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” is fodder for a painful first date.

There’s no worse nightmare than dating in 2026, making 1994’s “What Happened Was” feel oh so — that dreaded word — prescient. —RL

The Bite: Speak for Yourself, I Love Trauma Dumping

Look. Any woman in a movie who gets introduced listening to ’Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry,” running around her silk-draped apartment half-naked, is going to have my allegiance, full stop. And sorry, but there’s just no denying that Karen Sillas looks absolutely stunning in that little burgundy dress. Hell, even watching Tom Noonan visibly shake as Michael struggled to process the passive-aggressive complexities of the batshit woman’s home he was in, nothing — nothing!! — could make me hate Jackie.

Blending the unease of something like 1979’s “When a Stranger Calls” with the everyday misery of a more grounded relationship drama, “What Happened Was” frames its main characters like potential players in a would-be horror movie from the jump. But those archetypes are hard to pin down at first. Michael isn’t an obvious predator so much as he is socially off, faintly alien, and hard to read. That ambiguity clashes with Jackie’s cool, home-field advantage in a way that feels fun… until that very chemistry sours into a poison that’s one part “Sliver,” two parts “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Drenched in purple hues and shifting candlelight, Jackie’s apartment does a lot of the unsettling. The set feels less like a ’90s living room than a cozy villain’s lair, warm but volatile (and easily set ablaze). Every detail on screen feels both meaningful and intentionally unstable, from the light-up goose we see glaring at us from Jackie’s feet, to the strange mix of posters featuring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” and a black-and-white photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.

The room suggests a personality that has been carefully curated and is still intensely personal, but coming from an occupant who’s obviously unwell. That shift in Michael’s understanding is subtle but arrives early on, when his casual, “I guess this is a lull,” quip turns an awkward beat into an excruciating disconnect. With more than half the film to go, that’s the second you feel truly “stuck” with them.

From there, “What Happened Was” settles into a rhythm that feels painfully recognizable and yet rarely predictable. Anchored in the universal psychological tensions that underlie not just bad dates but most bad dynamics, Jackie and Michael’s thorny sense of instant codependence eventually prompts each person to deliver their own unhinged monologue. But Ryan was right to warn me about Jackie’s feverish description of an abusive Southern Gothic childhood — if only, because both Michael and my reaction to that reveal fundamentally changed how I saw the rest of the night.

Critically, Michael doesn’t recoil when Jackie shares her horrific story. He lights up, and for most women I know, that’s scarier. Once offered, vulnerability isn’t always met with care by the people we date, and instead, it can be absorbed or even fetishized with reckless cruelty. When Michael pivots from his sweaty-lipped, almost horny fascination with Jackie’s trauma to clumsily suggesting she publish her book professionally, the tone suggests her weakness has made him somehow ravenous.

I’ve dated several writers, and broadly speaking, it’s a fast track to mutual emotional cannibalism. If someone’s job is to mine reality for meaning, intimacy can feel like raw material. And when two artists date each other, one of them almost always has to shrink. Watching Jackie read her profoundly scary tale, my reaction moved from curiosity to revulsion to fear… not of her, but of Michael. Too many women know the feeling of watching a man lean in too close when the subject turns to her pain, and “What Happened Was” dares to ask a question that still stings years later: What do you disclose, and why?

By the end, Noonan’s film stops feeling like a first date and starts to resemble the makings of a crime scene as his mood lurches toward something dangerous. Every frame tightens with dread, to the point that even a corked champagne bottle feels like a weapon, and Jackie’s birthday cake becomes a test Michael was never going to pass. And yet, even as the world’s worst renter spiraled out of control, I stayed on her side. If only because these two colleagues’ brush with real connection crystallizes what it’s truly like when one person insists something was “important” — while the other retreats.

When Michael asks if this was “a date,” it’s not clarifying so much as strategic, and what’s striking about Noonan’s meditation on misery is how much dating hasn’t changed since 1994. Decades on, “What happened was…” is still how many of us soften our most difficult romantic stories, subtly blurring sharp memories into an arc that’s more survivable. But like Jackie washing dishes, and turning off that (very cool?!) lamp, you have to wonder if we rewrite our experiences primarily because, then, we don’t have to admit to ourselves that we already knew how those relationships would end. When Jackie says, “We all are where we are because we want to be there, right?” it lands like a threat with no weight behind it. And when Michael asks, “What do I do now?” the suggestion to go home isn’t a comfort so much as a guilty verdict. —AF

Read more installments of After Dark, IndieWire’s midnight movie club:

Hot Docs, the major nonfiction film festival in Toronto, has announced award winners for the event’s 33^rd edition.

Earning Best International Feature Documentary was House of Hope, directed by Marjolein Busstra, a film set in the occupied West Bank that focuses on an elementary school run by a couple who teach their young Palestinian students non-violent resistance, “offering a refuge from the escalating uncertainty that surrounds them.”

The award comes with a $10,000 cash prize (courtesy of Donner Canadian Foundation) and automatically qualifies the film for Oscar consideration.

“A powerful and unsentimental film that bears witness to a family-run Waldorf school in the West Bank and its profound commitment to nurturing the humanity of children,” writes the jury comprised of Robyn Citizen, Daniela Michel, and Lina Rodriguez. “For its clear-eyed portrait of educators whose quiet everyday resilience stubbornly insists on hope under the shadow of occupation and genocide, the jury enthusiastically presents Marjolein Busstra with the Hot Docs Best International Feature Documentary award for House of Hope.”

Best Canadian Feature Documentary went to Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom, directed by Kim Nguyen. The film reveals “the elusive connection between two families and photojournalist Eddie Adams’s iconic photo, ‘Saigon Execution,’ confronting family secrets left in the wake of the Vietnam War, exposing the resilience of survivors and blurred legacy of wartime memory.”

The award is accompanied by a $10,000 cash prize (courtesy of Telefilm Canada). Hot Docs hosted the world premiere for Saigon Story.

The jury, comprised of Avril Benoît, Jason Gorber, and Yiqian Zhang, writes, “For this film’s illuminating look at the story behind an iconic image and the city where it was captured, its compelling analysis of the lasting effects of a conflict from more than a half century ago, and its deep dive into the complex historical, political and emotional aspects that expand well beyond the frame of one of the most haunting moments ever captured on film, the Jury presents the Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature Documentary award to Kim Nguyen’s Saigon Story: Two Shootings in the Forest Kingdom.”

Coincidentally, a short documentary about the legacy of the Eddie Adams “Saigon Execution” photo — On Healing Land, Birds Perch, directed by Naja Phạm Lockwood – made the Oscar shortlist this past year.

The Hot Docs 2026 Awards Presentation was held Friday at El Mocambo in Toronto. The festival continues through Sunday. The Hot Docs Rogers Audience Award for Best Canadian Documentary will be announced on Sunday – with the winner receiving a $50,000 cash prize, courtesy of Rogers. Winners of the Hot Docs Audience Award for feature and short documentary will be announced on Monday (May 4).

Scroll for the winners of awards in competition announced on Friday.

The festival’s Best International Short Documentary was presented to Replikka, directed by Piratá Waurá. “The short film offers an unforgettable look at Waura culture and their efforts to protect Indigenous land, traditions, and stories,” writes the jury, comprised of Fazila Amiri, Martin Edralin, and Shonna Foster. “Its beautiful cinematography and rhythmic sound design made a strong impression on the jury, in addition to its urgent call against the erasure of Indigenous culture and memory, and its unique perspective from within the Waura community.”

Best Canadian Short Documentary went to My Body Goes to Work, directed by Fernanda Molina. “In just 12 minutes, Fernanda Molina Perez Diez crafts an intimate and humanizing portrait of a Toronto sex worker, revealing the complexity behind job titles and underscoring the nature of care work in all its forms,” write jurors Amiri, Edralin, and Foster. “Raw and observant, the film left the jury in reflection on the everyday realities of sex work, reframing a life too often reduced to a label.”

Both Replikka and My Body Goes to Work earned $3,000 cash prizes and by virtue of winning at Hot Docs they automatically qualify for Oscar consideration.

Along with the above-mentioned films, these are the Hot Docs awards winners announced on Friday:

The Lindalee Tracey Award, which honors an emerging Canadian filmmaker with a passionate point of view, a strong sense of social justice and a sense of humor, was presented to Özgün Gündüz. The Lindalee Tracey award includes a $5000 cash prize from the Lindalee Tracey Fund, $5000 in-kind voucher from the Picture Shop and a beautifully glass blown sculpture by Andrew Kuntz.

Hot Docs Docs for Schools Student Choice Award is awarded to the documentary that receives the highest rating in the student audience poll was presented to Nekai Walks (D: Rico King | P: David Mcilvride | Canada | 2026 | 90 min). At 16, Nekai Foster was shot while walking home in Toronto’s Jane and Finch neighborhood. His journey of survival and recovery—defying all medical odds as he relearns to walk—exposes how gun violence shapes bodies, families and communities.

The winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize.

Hot Docs Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award is given to a Canadian filmmaker whose film in competition is their first or second feature-length film. The award, which includes a $3,000 cash prize courtesy of the Earl A. Glick Family, was presented to Sébastien Trahan, the director of Code of Misconduct (D: Sébastien Trahan | P: Annie Bourdeau | Canada | 2026 | 88 min). An investigative journalist’s duty to follow the facts leads to the trial of five Canadian professional hockey players charged with sexual assault, unravelling our national pastime and questioning the institutions that hold the sport accountable.

Jury Statement: “For its journalistically rich examination of accountability and power and privilege within Canadian hockey, as well as the film’s amplification of voices calling for justice, the Jury presents the Hot Docs Earl A. Glick Emerging Canadian Filmmaker Award to Sébastien Trahan for Code of Misconduct.”

Hot Docs Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary, sponsored by the Bill Nemtin Legacy Fund, which recognizes the producers of a Hot Docs 2026 official selection film who find and tell compelling stories that inspire social or political change, and encourage their audiences to change their attitudes or behaviours or strive for policy change, went to directors Chul Young Cho, Shin Wan Kim, Jong Woo Kim, and producers Sona Jo and Shin Wan Kim of The Seoul Guardians (D: Chul Young Cho, Shin Wan Kim, Jong Woo Kim | P: Sona Jo, Shin Wan Kim | South Korea | 2026 | 71 min).

[Film description]: When martial law was shockingly declared in 2024, the people of Seoul took to the streets to protect their democracy. Driven by memories of past dictatorships, this urgent reportage-style film captures a night of chaos and powerful, collective citizen resistance.

A $10,000 cash prize accompanies the award, supported by the Bill Nemtin Legacy Fund.

Jury Statement: “For a film of great urgency that speaks to the vagaries of political upheaval, the power of protest, and the foundational need for any free society to have an engaged press ready to pursue the truth in all of its messiness and meaningfulness, the Jury presents the Hot Docs Bill Nemtin Award for Best Social Impact Documentary to the film team behind The Seoul Guardians, the directors Chul Young Cho, Shin Wan Kim, Jong Woo Kim, and producers Sona Jo and Shin Wan Kim.”

Hot Docs Emerging International Filmmaker Award, supported by the R&M Lang Foundation, was awarded to Dawood Hilmandi, director of Paikar (D: Dawood Hilmandi | P: Frank Hoeve, Katja Draaijer | Netherlands | 2025 | 97 min). From exile in Amsterdam, filmmaker Dawood Hilmandi reflects on his family nickname, Paikar, the Persian word for warrior. Returning to Iran to reconcile with his authoritarian father, their journey to Afghanistan during a pandemic transforms a lifetime of displacement into a story of survival.

The award is given to an international filmmaker whose film in competition is their first or second feature-length film, and includes a $3,000 cash prize, courtesy of the R&M Lang Foundation.

Jury statement: For its poetic meditation on transgenerational trauma that evocatively navigates the entanglement of memory, war and exile from a deeply personal perspective—initiating a moving dialogue across a lifetime of displacement, the Jury presents the Hot Docs Emerging International Filmmaker Award to Dawood Hilmandi for Paikar.”

Hot Docs DGC Special Jury Prize-Canadian Feature Documentary, sponsored by DGC National and DGC Ontario, is awarded to a feature-length documentary in the Canadian Spectrum Competition program that the jury feels is deserving of special recognition and was presented to Ceremony (D: Banchi Hanuse | P: Banchi Hanuse | Canada | 2026 | 84 min). At Nuxalk Radio, a ramshackled station on the edge of the world, an inquiry into the vanished ooligan fish uncovers a chilling history rooted in the attempted erasure of the Nuxalk people and their enduring resilience.

The award comes with a $5,000 cash prize, courtesy of DGC National and DGC Ontario.

Jury Statement: “For this film’s poignant look at Indigenous resistance and reclamation of past-traditions, illustrating a community grappling to resuscitate unceded lands, all while showing how the actions of a Nation foster healing by respecting what came before while working towards a better future, the Hot Docs DGC Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature goes to Banchi Hanuse’s Ceremony.”

Hot Docs Joan VanDuzer Special Jury Prize-International Feature Documentary, in memory of long time Hot Docs supporter Joan VanDuzer, is awarded to a feature-length documentary in the International Spectrum Competition program that the jury feels is deserving of special recognition and was given to The 49th Year (D: Heidrun Holzfeind | P: Heidrun Holzfeind | Austria, Germany, Japan | 2026 | 88 min). Through thoughtful letters from prison, an anarchist incarcerated since 1980 reflects on his radical past. This meditative portrait pairs humane narration with contemporary Japanese landscapes, exploring the quiet tensions between aging, political militancy and time itself.

Hot Docs is pleased to present the winner with a $5,000 cash prize, in memory of Joan VanDuzer.

Jury statement: “For its astute view on political ideologies and its meditative exploration of the true costs of radical action beyond isolated moments of protest and conventional electoral politics—and the ways in which periods of dissent can fade into enforced consensus, the jury recognizes Heidrun Holzfeind’s elegiac yet piercing attention to one man and the echoes of his resistance with the Hot Docs Joan VanDuzer Special Jury Prize-International Feature Documentary.”

Canadian producer Jennifer Holness received the Hot Docs Don Haig Award, announced earlier in the Festival. The Award is given to an outstanding independent Canadian producer with a film in the Festival in recognition of their creative vision, entrepreneurship and track record for nurturing emerging talent, and comes with a $5,000 cash prize, courtesy of the Don Haig Foundation.