His short film ‘Talk Me’ was produced by Spike Lee and shot entirely on location in Valencia. The filmmaker already participated in the SXSW Festival with his previous short, ‘Deliver Me.’ València, 25 April 2025. The Valencian director of Chinese and Lebanese descent Joecar Hanna has been selected to compete with his third short film, Talk Me, in La Cinef at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, to be held from 13 to 24 May. The 20-minute film was executive produced by Oscar-winning director Spike Lee.

Cinef is an Official Selection of the prestigious European festival created to support the next generation of international filmmakers. Each year, between 15 and 20 short and medium-length films are selected from film schools of new talents from all countries.

Hannah’s short film in this year’s edition is titled Talk Me and is his Master of Fine Arts in Film (MFA) final project at New York University (NYU).

The proposal represents the filmmaker’s return to his hometown. The plot of this dystopian drama is shot on location in Valencia, Puerto de Sagunto, the Grau Vell and Alginet, and its characters organically alternate between Spanish, Cantonese, Fang, Valencian and Catalan.

“Returning to the place where I grew up and lived until I was 28 years old to tell this story was significant, both personally and creatively. Living there as a mixed-race person gave me fond memories and deep connections, but I also experienced first-hand a cultural ambiguity, always partially included, but never with a full sense of belonging,” develops Hanna.

Collaboration with Alexandre Rockwell and feature film debut

The filmmaker has just completed his MFA studies at New York University (NYU). Before moving to New York, Joecar worked as an editor on six feature films and a TV series, including titles such as El desentierro (Nacho Ruipérez, 2018) and Bikes, The Movie (Manuel J. García, 2018), nominated for a Goya Award.

After moving to New York, he began to stand out at NYU for his work as a screenwriter and director, winning the Black Family Award for the screenplay of his short film Deliver Me.

This film was his debut in narrative fiction. It premiered at SXSW 2023 in the official short film competition. It was acquired by Canal+, and earned Hanna the Ang Lee scholarship for her third year at NYU.

Joecar was also selected as one of five directors and screenwriters to be awarded the prestigious Sony Pictures Classics Marcie Bloom Fellowship.

After starring in his own short film ‘Deliver Me’, the emerging director took on one of the lead roles and edited Lump, the upcoming feature film by director Alexandre Rockwell (In the Soup, Four Rooms) winner of the Special Mention Award at the Warsaw International Film Festival 2024 and currently in competition at BAFICI 2025.

Report by ‘24/7 Valencia’ team

Article copyright ‘24/7 Valencia’