Director Joséphine Darcy-Hopkins has secured an advance on receipts from France’s CNC for Docile, her first feature film. The project is one of four debut features picked in the fourth 2026 session of the scheme, and Catherine Frot and Philippe Katerine could appear in it. The film is set to shoot in France next summer.
Docile tells the story of two sisters who are sent to spend the summer with grandparents they have never met after their mother dies. Their grandfather gives one of the girls a hairless rat and asks her to keep it a secret, setting up a story about grief, family and the things children are asked to hide. Vincent Brançon of To Be Continued and Jean-Christophe Reymond of Kazak Productions are producing, and filming is planned for next summer in the Grand Est region of north-eastern France.
Two of the other three selected debuts are also by women. Lou du Pontavice is preparing Maïa, about a 17-year-old on Réunion Island whose life is unsettled by the arrival of a new classmate. Ninon Chapuis is developing it, with Silex Films as executive co-producer, and it will shoot on Réunion next spring. María Cristina Pérez González is directing My Dad the Truck, an animated film about a girl and her father who leave their flood-damaged home for the city. Sacrebleu Productions in France, Sultana Films in Spain and Pez Dorado Animaciones in Colombia are behind it.
The fourth project is Les fées by Fabien-Mariano Ortiz, set in Saint-Denis in the 1980s. It follows a social worker trying to find a home for a baby that nobody will take, and Diane Krüger leads the cast. Caroline Nataf is producing for Unité, adding a recognised international name to a session otherwise focused on new directors. Like the other three projects, it is a first feature, which is the basis on which this session of the scheme was awarded.
The advance on receipts is one of the main ways first-time directors in France raise early money, and support at this stage often helps producers close the rest of their financing. For Darcy-Hopkins, the backing arrives with a cast already taking shape and a shooting window set. With three of the four selected debuts directed by women, this round of the scheme gives a clear look at the next generation of French filmmakers moving towards production.
