This upcoming January 2024, First Cut Lab will celebrate the 10th edition of its founding program, launched in cooperation with When East Meets West. Indeed, the very First Cut Lab workshop took place in Trieste in January 2015. Now after 80 First Cut Labs run around the world, more than 230 alumni films, our growing team will meet up in the Italian port to celebrate.

For this 10th anniversary edition, we decided to symbolically focus our attention on Ukrainian cinema. Reasons are obvious. To start with, Ukraine is one of the focus countries of this year’s When East Meets West. Most importantly, First Cut Lab has experienced some of its most fruitful moments with Ukrainian filmmakers. Over the years, our Lab has grown following a somehow parallel path as the one of Ukrainian cinema’s rising recognition internationally. We have no intention to stop!

From When The Trees Fall by Marysia Nikituk workshopped in Trieste in 2017 to Stepne by Maryna Vroda that will be part of Trieste Film Festival competition 2024, a dozen of Ukrainian films have been taking part in our Lab. To name a few: Stop-Zemlia by Kateryna Gornostai, Pamfir by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, or My Thoughts Are Silent by Antonio Lukich. And we are eagerly looking forward more films to premiere: Chrysanthemum Day by Simon Mozgovoy, Company of Steel by Yulia Gontarchuk, or U Are The Universe by Pavlo Ostrikov.

All or nearly all our team will join Trieste for this anniversary:

• Director & Heads of Lab Matthieu Darras, Julie Marnay, and Natalia Libet
• Editorial Advisors Erica Barbiani, Suzy Gillett, Naomi Levari, Wim Vanacker
• Editor Consultants Catalin Cristutiu, Una Gunjak, Maya Maffioli, Benjamin Mirguet, Sebastian Winkels.

Besides the workshop itself, we are planning to mark this milestone by offering a series of vivid talks on film editing to When East Meets West guests on the 23rd of January 2024.

First Cut Lab Trieste is an initiative by Tatino Films, with the support and in cooperation with When East Meets West.