2023

Franco-Swiss director Loïc Hobi was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1997. His work is influenced by the themes of queerness and solitude. After several self-produced experiences, he studied directing at the École de la Cité, graduating in 2019 with his short film L’Homme jetée. His filmography focuses as much on fiction as experimental projects such as Face à face dans la nuit, shot on the sites of cam2cam and Les Nouveaux Dieux, based on videos of an incel. His film The Life Underground, a coming of age film in the tunnels of the metro, was screened in competition at the Locarno Festival and was nominated for the Swiss Film Award. He recently shot Alexx196 et la plage de sable rose, a short film combining his narrative and experimental interests to tell the story of two best friends meeting in real life for the first time. He is currently developing his first feature, Bad Gays, with the support of Cloud Fog Haze Pictures.

Charlie Kouka was born in Gafsa, Tunisia. After studying optometrics in Tunis, she did a Masters in production in 2013 before joining the Directing department of La Fémis two years later. While there she mas two fiction shorts, Yema (2018) and Rajaâ le retour (2019), which were selected for several festivals (Teheran, Alexandrie, Fameck, Almaty). She is currently writing her first feature, Le Procès de Leïla, supported by the production companies Unité and Nomadis. She took part in the Marrakech Festival Atlas Workshops with this project.

Alexe Poukine is a director and scriptwriter. After studying drama and photography, she went on to study anthropology, documentary filmmaking and then scripting. Petites morts, her graduation film, was screened in several international films, as were her two feature-length documentaries, Dormir, dormir dans les pierres (2013) and Sans frapper (2019), selected for Premiers Plans. In 2020 she made her first fiction short, Palma, which won the Best Actress Award in Angers. Alexe Poukine studied at the Scriptwriting Workshop at La Fémis in 2013, and is also a photographer and actress. She is currently filming a documentary and writing the script of a fiction feature, Aux grands maux, produced by Kidam.

Director and scriptwriter Marie Rosselet-Ruiz began her career by taking part in several writing residencies. In 2018, as part of the Résidence de La Fémis, a programme for self-taught directors, she made the short film Le Ciel est clair, which she came to present at the Festival Premiers Plans as part of the carte blanche Talents en Court at the Comedy Club. With her sister Hélène, she co-directed Ibiza in 2021, screened at several festivals in France and abroad, and which won a coup de coeurs des Inrocks at the 2022 short film festival. This year she made her latest short, Lothar 1999, while working on her first feature, Authentiks, produced by Take Shelter.

Born in Rome in 1990 to an Italian father and a Belgian mother, Mathieu Volpe settled in Belgium in 2009 to study directing at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion in Louvain-la-Neuve. In 2014, he made his graduation film, Il segreto del serpente, which was selected for more than 20 festivals including the Torino Film Festival, Huesca, Lussas and Filmer à tout prix. His second short, a documentary entitled Notre territoire, was also screened in a number of festivals. He is currently completing a documentary feature, jeunesse italienne, and preparing his first fiction short, Eldorado. In parallel he is developing, with the support of Les Films du Fleuve, his first feature, L’Or rouge, which lies between fiction and documentary, and for which he was selected for the Jerusalem Film Lab, where he won the Emerging Filmmaker Award.