Left: Julie Marnay / Right: Naomi Levari

First Cut Lab is very pleased to announce that two accomplished women film professionals, Naomi Levari and Julie Marnay, are joining the team of international collaborators led by Matthieu Darras. Following the expansion of the programme, with 18 workshops organized in 2021, they will act respectively as editorial consultant and program manager. 

Naomi will be actively involved as editorial consultant, in charge of facilitating and moderating the artistic content of the First Cut Lab working sessions. She is a producer and script editor, co-founder of Tel Aviv-based Black Sheep Film Productions Ltd and more recently of Berlin-based production company Electric Sheep GmbH, which focuses on socially related content. Naomi’s tailor-made film & TV productions include series such as Mama’s Angel (Series Mania, 2016) and Dismissed (2021), and features such as One Week and a Day (Cannes, 2016), Stripped (Venice, 2018), Fig Tree (Toronto, 2018), or Chained (Berlinale, 2019). Naomi is known for her customized approach and engagement in every aspect of film making, establishing herself as a sought-after lecturer and mentor. 

As program manager, Julie will coordinate and ensure proper implementation of the workshops organized in the framework of First Cut Lab. After a ten years’ experience at Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique as Responsible for Short Films and then Coordinator of Next Step, a program created to support short filmmakers towards their first feature film, she is now involved in the management and organization of film development and market access programs such as Full Circle Lab and FIDLab. She is the head of European Short Pitch since 2019, an annual development and networking program aimed at European emerging short film talents. Since 2019, she is part of the short film committee of the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal.

Welcome to both of them!