Amos Gitai, born in 1950 in Haifa, Israel, was studying architecture, following in his father’s footsteps, when the Yom Kippur War interrupted his studies. He started using a small Super-8 camera during his helicopter missions. He then became a filmmaker. Amos Gitai has produced an extraordinarily varied body of work in which he explores the …
Mehran Tamadon was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1972. He first studied architecture in Paris before turning to filmmaking. He directed his first documentary, Behesht zahra, in 2004. In 2010, he made Bassidji in which he documented his attempts to enter into a dialogue with the Basij militia whose members have dedicated their lives to …
Maher Abi Samra was born in Beirut in 1965. He studied drama arts and worked as photojournalist for the Lebanese press, before doing audiovisual studies. Since 1995, he has written and directed several documentaries.
Alassane Diago was born in 1985 in Agnam Lidoubé, Senegal. After completing an audiovisual training course in Dakar in 2007, he took several courses in directing techniques and scriptwriting, notably with the documentary filmmaker Samba Félix Ndiaye. He worked on various film sets, including Lili-et-le baobab directed by Chantal Richard, before directing his first feature-length …
Alexander Abaturov was born in 1984 in Russia. He graduated from Gorky University and became a journalist after his studies. In 2010, he arrived in France and joined the Master in Creative Documentary Filmmaking at the Lussas Documentary School. In 2013, he directed his first documentary film, Les Âmes dormantes, which was selected in many …
Jean-Louis Comolli is a French filmmaker, screenwriter and writer, born in 1941 in Philippeville (now Skikda, Algeria). After working for Les Cahiers du Cinéma from 1962 to 1978, of which he was editor in chief from 1966 to 1971, he became a director of fiction and documentaries. Also a journalist for Jazz Magazine, he has …
Katy Lena Ndiaye lives between Dakar and Brussels. Documentary filmaker, her films put on screen a contemporary Africa, the relationship it has with history, memory and legacies. L’argent, la liberté, une histoire du franc CFA, is her latest film. A feature documentary devoted to the CFA franc, a currency inherited from the French colonial system …
Pascal Deux started out in cinema with Vivement Dimanche by François Truffaut. After acareer as assistant director – during which he collaborated with great cinematographers suchas Samuel Fuller and Jacques Rivette – he went into directing. After two short films,Constance and Soigneurs Dehors ! – both selected for numerous international festivals – hedirected Noble Art, a documentary included in …
Luc Moullet, born in 1937, joined Cahiers du cinéma at the age of 18 alongside Truffaut, Rivette, Godard, Chabrol and Rohmer. He made his first films in 1960. From 1966, he became an actor as well as a producer (of his own films but also of Eustache and Duras). To date, he has signed 38 …
Claire Simon came to cinema through editing. Récréations and Coûte que coûte resonate with others as the sign of the advent of documentary in French cinema. Since then, she has alternated between documentary films for the cinema and fictions. Claire Simon films the others around her as heroes: the children of Récréations, the stressed boss …
Johanna Bedeau studied anthropology and has extended her fieldwork by making documentaries. Working for more than seventeen years on the condition of women in Africa and in France, she made her first documentary film Bilakoro, on excision in Mali, then Ma cité au féminin, on the condition of women in the housing estates, and numerous …
Quentin Papapietro, born in Limoges in 1987, graduate of the ESAV and a former critic at the Cahiers du cinéma, has shot in ten years twenty short films, including 40A service Pierrick (2020) broadcast on Canal+, as well as two feature films, Water Music (2014) and En Fumée (2018). His films, selected at major festivals …