Welcome to ‘Newtopia’
 

PostED ON 20.10.2022

"To create a new world, you have to start by imagining it”, according to Magali Payen and Cyril Dion.

Magali Payen, a producer of ‘impact’ films, inspired by concerns of ecology and the living, came to present Newtopia, a production company she launched with Cyril Dion and Marion Cotillard. It sets up the production of ‘new world’ stories, including writing workshops and a studio that aims to support scriptwriters with writing residencies to encourage interactions between scientists and grassroots actors.

“Newtopias”, she explains, are new places of imagination, which distance themselves from the dystopias that demotivate us to act, far from the utopias that are out of touch with reality, rather, providing ideas for “what the new world could look like in the best scenario”. Newtopia's objective is to make us dream of this new world, to give us the desire to act today. The production department, with the support of a multitude of scriptwriters, will meet with experts, scientists, major thinkers and whistleblowers. Once the films are released, the focus will be on transforming their ideas into action.

© Léa Rener

Three projects are underway on the production side: the first is with Julie Gautier, freediver and director of underwater dance videos, notably for the ‘Runnin' MV performed by Naughty Boy, featuring Beyoncé. "We will make a first short film together, a nautical fable between a little water dancer and a plastic giant, with the metaphor you can guess." A poetic film to encourage people to work for the protection of the oceans.

Cyril Dion is turning to fiction with an ecological thriller, ‘Le Grand Vertige’, an adaptation of Pierre Ducrozet's book that questions how to be an activist on issues of violence and non-violence, and notions of solidarity and generational breakdowns. Finally, a project on Françoise D'Eaubonne, a great intellectual and activist, who coined the term ‘ecofeminism’. In her fifties, she began campaigning for women’s rights, gay rights, and nature, even going so far as to plant a bomb in a nuclear power station under construction. 

© Léa Rener

Reported by Charlotte Pavard