Ghassan Salhab Born in Dakar, Senegal, in May 1958. As well as directing his own films, he writes screenplays and teaches at various universities in Lebanon. He has directed nine feature films and several ‘essays’. He is also the author of two books: Fragments du Livre du naufrage (2012, Amers Editions) and À contre-jour (depuis Beyrouth) …
Marie Dumora She shoots her films in eastern France, within a few acres of each other, and has thus created a territory of herself. The characters in one film lead to the next like Ariadne’s thread, so much so that it is not uncommon to find them a few years later from one film to …
Born in Zurich in 1944, he was the grandson of Italian immigrants who had settled in Switzerland. He left school at the age of 15 and began travelling, working in various food trades. He moved to Paris in 1966. Self-taught, he became a film-maker by watching several films a day at the Cinémathèque française and …
Lemohang Mosese The Berlin-based visual artist and self-taught filmmaker was born in Hlotse, Lesotho. His visual essay Mother, I Am Suffocating, This Is My Last Film About You premiered in the Forum at the Berlinale in 2019 and has been presented at other high-profile festivals and institutions such as MoMA. The following year, he was …
Gianluca Matarrese An Italian director based in Paris, he has established himself as a prominent voice in contemporary documentary filmmaking. Over the past five years, he has directed nine acclaimed films presented at prestigious international festivals, including the Venice Film Festival, IDFA, Thessaloniki, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, DMZ, Torino Film Festival, Visions du Réel, Biografilm, Festival …
Emmanuelle Bidou Born in 1969, Emmanuelle Bidou is a French ethnologist and anthropologist. Since the 90s, she has been writing and directing short documentaries for television. She also works as a trainer in various film schools, notably the Atelier Varan in Paris.
Joana Dos Reis It was around the age of 30, when I was working in a local cinema in Paris and living a fast-paced life, that I was bitten by the documentary film bug. The films of Frederick Wizeman, Robert Kramer, Claire Simon, Agnès Varda, the Maysles brothers and so many others opened my eyes …
Radu Jude A Romanian film director. Radu Jude was born in 1977. He made several short films before moving on to feature films with The Happiest Girl in the World (2009). He works in both fiction and documentary.
Sylvie Ballyot A graduate of the Fémis film school, Sylvie Ballyot turned to experimental cinema to make Tu crois qu’on peut parler d’autre chose que d’amour? co-directed with Béatrice Kordon. From then on, her favourite themes have been desire, identity and family relationships. Her latest film, Green Line, is the culmination of a process of …
An artist and filmmaker based in London, England. He has made around 40 short and feature length films which tread a fine line between documentary and fiction, and often focusing on people who have separated themselves from mainstream society.
Sômai Shinji Born in 1948 in Morioka, Iwate, Bio Shinji Sômai gave up his studies in literature at Chuo University in 1972 to become an assistant director under contract to Studio Nikkatsu. He then went freelance, working as an assistant director with filmmakers such as Hasgawa Kazuhiko and Terayama Shuji. He directed his first film, …