Amazon Prime Video is launching the Victorine Narrative Lab, a mentoring program for aspiring writers, in collaboration with the French Riviera city of Nice and the top-ranking French film school Louis-Lumiere.
Through the program, Amazon Prime Video will allow emerging writers to craft, develop, and perfect their first feature film with artistic and professional guidance from established French authors and screenwriters and professors from Louis-Lumière. At the end of the Lab, Prime Video will have first-look rights on the scripts, and will have the opportunity to develop projects further with the writer.
Spanning five months, the mentoring program will take place at the Victorine studios in Nice and online from January to May 2022. A call for first projects will open soon.
The program was conceived by Sylvie Landra, chair of the AMPAS’s event committee in Europe, and Sébastien Cauchon, a former executive at the French film promotion organization UniFrance Film International. Cauchon and Landra previously teamed up to expand AMPAS’s Gold fellowship Award Women in France.
“Supporting the incredible wealth and creativity of writers and recognizing the hard work and talent of creative communities is central to Amazon Studios’ strategy across Europe,” said Georgia Brown, head of European Amazon Originals at Amazon Studios.
“We’re thrilled to partner with the city of Nice and the ENS Louis-Lumière to build this new mentoring program for aspiring writers and I can’t wait to see the fruit of this collaboration and the exciting ideas these writers will bring to life,” said Brown.
Thomas Dubois, head of French Amazon Originals at Amazon Studios, said it was “essential to (the company) to give back to the amazing community of talented writers across France and promote diversity of stories through programs like this one.”
Dubois added that Amazon wanted to “give these aspiring writers a chance to be heard and give them a helping hand to see their project become something more.”
Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, president of Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur and deputy president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, said “the collaboration (they’re) building today with Prime Video and the ENS Louis-Lumière meets the ambition of the City of Nice to strengthen the audiovisual landscape locally and the reputation of the Victorine Studios.”
He said: “this program offers an incredible opportunity to aspiring writers who will able to imagine, here in Nice, stories which will shape the cinema of tomorrow.”
The initiative underlines Prime Video’s ambition to forge further ties within France’s talent community, following the launch of its first French Amazon Original movie “Le Bal des Folles,” Melanie Laurent’s Toronto premiering film, series “Mixte” and formats such as “Love Island France” and “True Story.”
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