Eight Directors, Five Countries, Four Films: Inside KawanKawan Media’s ‘Next Step Studio Indonesia’ at Cannes

Four short films produced through the Next Step Studio Indonesia 2026 initiative are screening at Cannes’ Critics’ Week. The project features collaborations between eight directors representing five different countries.

Each of the four films was co-written and co-directed by one Indonesian filmmaker and one counterpart from another Southeast Asian nation. The filmmakers involved met in 2025 in Jakarta to begin the collaborative process of developing the projects.

The program was created in partnership with the Indonesian production company KawanKawan Media. It was first announced in October 2025 as a filmmaker incubator launching in 2026, with a guarantee that the resulting short films would premiere at Critics’ Week.

Program Structure and Philosophy

Next Step Studio Indonesia is the first Indonesian edition of a traveling initiative designed to provide specialized filmmaker training. The program’s creator and producer, Dominique Welinski, developed the project based on the belief that the compressed, cross-cultural process of co-writing and co-directing with a stranger offers a training experience that traditional residencies or labs cannot replicate.

More than 80 directors have gone through this program since 2013, most of them did their first feature and did open in big festivals.

Dominique Welinski

The initiative began in 2013 as La Factory at the Filmmaker’s Fortnight. Since its inception, the program has rotated annually through various countries to foster international cinematic collaboration.

The current 2026 iteration focuses on Southeast Asian partnerships, utilizing the co-direction model to push filmmakers to navigate different creative psyches and cultural perspectives to create a unified piece of cinema.