English

Roy Andersson was born in 1943 in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1969, he graduated from the Swedish Film School, and his first feature, A SWEDISH LOVE, won four prizes at the Berlin Film Festival in 1970. GILIAP, his second film, was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1976. In 1975, he started a pioneering career as a commercials director, earning a total of eight Golden Lions at Cannes. In 1981, he founded Studio 24 in Stockholm in order to freely produce and make his films. This is also where he developed his unique filmmaking style. After SOMETHING HAPPENED (1987) and WORLD OF GLORY (1991), two shorts that earned the most prestigious awards (a.o. Clermont-Ferrand), he shot SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR in his studio and won the Special Jury Prize at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. As the first chapter in The Living Trilogy, SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR was followed in 2007 by YOU, THE LIVING, which was also screened in Cannes. The films cemented his personal style characterized by stationary shots and meticulously conceived tableaux, absurdist comedy as well and an essential humanity. In 2009, Roy Andersson was distinguished by an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presenting not only his integral filmmaking oeuvre but also several of his commercials. A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE, his 5th feature film, is the final chapter in the The Living Trilogy, which has been 15 years in the making.

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar are both cult favorites and leading names in European animation. The pair met as art students, graduating in 1991 from the visual arts academy in Brussels. Their multiple award-winning 20-episode TV series A TOWN CALLED PANIC, in which simple plastic toys get into monumental trouble, has been shown all over the world. Two years of work went into the feature film, which would premiered in the Official Selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Brimming with wry internal logic and a virulent strain of Belgian surrealism, everything they animate overflows with imagination and energy.

Antonio Campos is a native New Yorker. He has directed more than 20 short films and documentaries. Aged 21, his short film buy it now had its world premiere at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation, where it won First Prize. Campos was accepted into the Cannes Residence Program a year later where he wrote the script for AFTERSCHOOL. In between completing the Residence and the production of AFTERSCHOOL, Campos appeared at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007 with his short film THE LAST 15, two American shorts in competition that year. A student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the film studies department, Campos recently formed the production company Borderline Films with his NYU classmates Josh Mond and Sean Durkin. AFTERSCHOOL is his feature film debut.

Born in Brighton, England, 1979, Thomas Clay studied 16mm film production as a teenager at the CFU, London. At the age of 19, he made his first medium-length film, MOTION, together with producer and co-writer Joseph Lang. This was followed by his feature debut, THE GREAT ECSTASY OF ROBERT CARMICHEAL, which made a deep impression at Critics’ Week in the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. His second Feature Film SOI COWBOY was set in Thailand where Clay resides.

Benjamin Dickinson got his start directing music videos for DFA record artists such as LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, and The Juan Maclean. He has since made videos for Q-Tip and Reggie Watts and directed commercials for Google, The Ford Motor Corporation, BMW, MTV and Guitar Hero. Before CREATIVE CONTROL, Ben also starred in his critically acclaimed first feature film, FIRST WINTER, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Michelangelo Frammartino was born in 1968 and studied architecture at the Polytechnic School of Milan. In 1992, he directed his first short film. He directed video installations (TRACCE, PRESENZE S-CONNESSE, LA CASA DELLE BELLE ADDORMENTATE, FILM) between 1995 and 1998. His first feature film, IL DONO, received awards in several prominent international film festivals. LE QUATTRO VOLTE, his second feature film, premiered at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes and was nominated for 3 Italian David di Donatello.

After writing a few unpublished novels, Alain Guiraudie directed his first short LES HÉROS SONT IMMORTELS in 1990, followed by TOUT DROIT JUSQU’ AU MATIN (1994) and LA FORCE DES CHOSES (1997). In 2000 the critics discovered his unique sensitivity, somewhere between the modern western and the philosophical tale with his film DU SOLEIL POUR LES GUEUX. His following film CE VIEUX RÊVE QUI BOUGE (2001), marking his will to still portray the working class, premiered at the Director's Fortnight in Cannes and was awarded the prestigious Jean Vigo Prize in 2001.

Zhou Hao was born on the 3rd of February 1992 in the city of Chongqing, China. He was born in a working-class family. Since September 2011 he is studying at the RTA (Radio and Television Arts) School of Media in Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications. For him, films can be a perfect combination of art, literature, music and photography. He directed a few short films before directing his first feature film, THE NIGHT.

Jessica Hausner was born on the 6th of October 1972 in Vienna, Austria. She studied directing at the Filmacademy of Vienna, where in 1996 she made the short film FLORA, which won the Leopard of Tomorrow at the Locarno Festival. INTER-VIEW, her graduation film, won the Prix du Jury of the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. Two years later, LOVELY RITA, her first feature film, was presented in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival before being distributed in twenty territories. Her second feature film HOTEL was again selected in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival 2004. Her next film LOURDES had its premiere at Venice Film Festival 2009 in International Competition where it won the FIPRESCI Prize. Hausner’s latest film AMOUR FOU is set around 1810 in Berlin and is based on the tragic life of the German writer Henrich von Kleist.

Susanne Heinrich, a vicar’s daughter from East Germany, wrote 4 books between the ages of 19 and 25 (most recently Amerikanische Gefühle, Dumont 2011). She was nominated for the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Prize and received fellowships at Villa Aurora L.A. and Casa Baldi Olevano Romano (Villa Massimo). She sings in various bands and has pursued a variety of artistic projects. With her first short film she was accepted into the German Film and Television Academy (dffb). Following several experiments, AREN'T YOU HAPPY is her first feature film.

Dagur Kári, born 1973, is an Icelandic film director. Dagur graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1999. His first feature film NÓI ALBINÓI was released in 2003 and won several international awards. His second film DARK HORSE was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. In 2008, he finished his first English language film THE GOOD HEART.

Born in 1975 in Moscow, Ilya Khrzhanovsky studied at the Bonn Academy of Fine Art and graduated from the Russian film school VGIK in 1998. His first feature film 4 (2004) was awarded the Tiger Award and the Golden Cactus at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2005, the Best Director Prize at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema, the Grand Jury Prize as Best New Director at the Seattle International Film Festival and several others. DAU is Khrzhanovsky’s second feature film.

Bruce LaBruce, a filmmaker, writer, photographer and artist, was born in 1964 in Toronto, Canada. His first feature length film NO SKIN OFF MY ASS (1991) went on to become a world-wide cult hit, while his following films SUPER 8 ½ (1994), HUSTLER WHITE (1996), SKIN FLICK (1999), COME AS YOU ARE (2000), THE RASPBERRY REICH (2004), OTTO; OR UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE (2008), L.A. ZOMBIE (2010), GERONTOPHILIA (2013) became festivals’ favourites, earning slots in the programmes of Sundance, London, Berlin, Dublin, Thessaloniki, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco and Tokyo.

Bertrand Mandico, author-director, has cultivated a unique aesthetic and a flare for dark humour that juxtaposes macabre elements and burlesque. He has enriched his cinematic studies with various still format publications, photography, collage and drawings. Bertrand has also worked on promoting forgotten or under-appreciated filmmakers (he programmed a Walerian Borowczyk retrospective in Warsaw).
His audiovisual creations have been awarded various prizes. Bertrand Mandico is presently developing several feature length films.

Born on the 24th of August 1960 in Osaka, Japan. Graduating from Yokohama Academy of Broadcasting and Film (presently Japan Academy of Moving Images), he studied under directors Imamura Shohei and Onchi Hideo. He made his feature-film debut in 1995 with SHINJUKU KUROSHAKAI CHINA MAFIA WAR, and drew attention at foreign film festivals with his next, FUDO, made in 1996.
Working in a wide span of genres from adolescent to Yakuza movies to fantasy stories, he is a director who maintains a unique originality as an artist. In 1998 at the Vancouver International Film Festival, a special feature of the director in which three of his titles were presented was held. The Rotterdam Film festival followed with a special focus section on him where AUDITION was awarded the FIPRESCI Award. He is a highly praised filmmaker, in Japan as overseas.

Kornél Mundruczó was born in Hungary in 1975. PLEASANT DAYS, his first feature film, was awarded the Silver Leopard in Locarno in 2002. His second feature film, JOHANNA - a filmic opera adaptation of the story of Joan of Arc - was presented in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2005. DELTA was presented in competition at Cannes 2008 and was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. His second film to premiere in competition in Cannes was TENDER SON - THE FRANKENSTEIN PROJECT, in 2010.

Shirin Neshat, is an Iranian born artist and filmmaker whose work addresses the complex social and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women. Neshat was recognized for her portraits of women overlaid with calligraphy in the WOMEN OF ALLAH series. She also directed several video installations; among others RAPTURE (1999) and TURBULENT (1998), for which she was awarded the International Award at the 48th Venice Biennale. Her solo museum exhibitions include shows at the Whitney Museum, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Arts, Athens; The Serpentine Gallery, London. Her feature directorial debut WOMEN WITHOUT MEN won the Silver Lion in Venice 2009.

Prize winning film director Jonathan Nossiter has directed six feature films. The most recent NATURAL RESISTANCE was first shown at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival in two different sections (Panorama and Culinary Cinema). A meditation on rebellion in agriculture and culture, it was first released theatrically in Italy and in France and distribution will follow in 2015 in the UK, US and elsewhere.
MONDOVINO, a human comedy set in the wine world, was nominated for the Palme D’Or in Cannes in 2004 (one of only three documentaries ever nominated in the history of the festival) and was released in over 40 countries. A 10 part series derived from the feature, which he also directed and produced, had its world premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006.

Ruben Östlund was born in 1974 in Styrsö, a small island on the West Coast of Sweden. He studied graphic design before enrolling at the University of Gothenburg, where he met Erik Hemmendorff with whom he later founded Plattform Produktion. An avid skier, Östlund directed three ski films, alluding to his taste for long sequence shots, a taste he structured and developed throughout his film studies and which to this day remains an important trademark of his work.
Ruben has become well known for his humorous and accurate portrayal of human social behaviour, as well as for his renowned used of Photoshop and other forms of image-processing software in his films. His feature debut THE GUITAR MONGOLOID won the FIPRESCI Award at Moscow in 2005. His second feature, INVOLUNTARY, produced by the co-founder of Plattform Produktion, Erik Hemmendorff premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard 2008. The film was then distributed in more than 20 countries and shown at numerous festivals, awarding Ruben international recognition.
Two years later he won the Golden Bear in Berlin for INCIDENT BY A BANK, a short film in which every camera movement was computer generated in post-production. The premiere of his third feature film PLAY (2011) was held in Cannes at the Director’s Fortnight, where he was awarded the ‘Coup de coeur’ Prize. After Cannes, Play was shown in Venice and Toronto as well as numerous other festivals where it received additional prizes and distinctions: among others, PLAY was nominated for the prestigious LUX prize of the European Parliament and won the Nordic Prize, the highest distinction in Scandinavia. His fourth feature film, FORCE MAJEURE, premiered at Un Certain Regard in Cannes, where it was awarded the Jury Prize. The film was selected in countless festivals and won 16 Best Foreign film awards. FORCE MAJEURE was also nominated at the Golden Globes and shortlisted for an Oscar®. The film has been distributed in over 70 countries. THE SQUARE is the fourth of Östlund’s films to premiere in Cannes and his first feature to be selected in the Official Selection. It won the Palme d'Or in 2017 and was an Oscar® Nomination for Best Foreign Film in 2018.

Born in 1975 in Romania, he graduated from the Bucharest University of Drama and Film in 2003. His short films LIVIU'S DREAM (2003), GONE WITH THE WINE (2002), and A TRIP TO THE CITY (2003) won him several international awards, including a Prix de la Cinéfondation in Cannes 2004. After being a resident of Cinéfondation, he directed his first feature 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST in 2005, which premiered at the Directors' Fortnight 2006.

Cristi Puiu was born in Bucharest in 1967. As a student in the Painting Department of the École Supérieure d'Arts Visuels in Geneva, he shot several short films and documentaries in the 1990’s. After he returned to Romania, he continued to paint and co-wrote screenplays with Razvan Radulescu and Lucian Pintilie. In 2001, he made his first feature film, STUFF AND DOUGH, a road movie filmed with a hand-held camera in a near documentary style. It was invited to the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and won prizes at festivals, notably in Thessaloniki (Greece). In 2004 he won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Festival for his short film CIGARETTES AND COFFEE. THE DEATH OF MISTER LAZARESCU won the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes in 2005, as well as many other awards. AURORA is the second instalment of the Six Stories from the outskirts of Bucharest series and is Cristi Puiu’s third feature film.

Carlos Reygadas was born in 1971 in Mexico. His first feature film, JAPÒN was presented in 2002 at the film festivals in Rotterdam and in Cannes where it received the Camera d'Or. BATTLE IN HEAVEN his second feature film premiered in competition at Cannes 2005. SILENT LIGHT, released in 2007, won the Jury Prize in Cannes.

Roberto Rossellini was born in Rome on the 8^th March 1906, son of Angelo Giuseppe Rossellini, owner of a construction company (who built the Cinema Corso in Rome) and Elettra Bellan. ROME, OPEN CITY, released in the autumn of 1945, made Rossellini famous around the world and marked the birth of Neorealism in cinema. In 1946 it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Rossellini continued his new artistic direction with PAISAN, a film which once again dealt with the liberation of Italy after the fall of Fascism. Together with GERMANY YEAR ZERO (1948), they constituted the so-called “neorealist trilogy.”
With actress Anna Magnani he worked on a cinematic experiment titled Amore, which was released in 1946 and composed by two episodes, THE HUMAN VOICE (La voce umana) and THE MIRACLE (Il miracolo). Over the same period Rossellini began a professional collaboration as well as a romantic relationship with Ingrid Bergman, who was cast in STROMBOLI. They worked at various films together: THE GREATEST LOVE, JOURNEY TO ITALY, AND JOAN OF ARC AT THE STAKE.
Before completely devoting himself to television, Rossellini directed a few other important films such as GENERAL DELLA ROVERE (Il Generale Della Rovere), ESCAPE BY NIGHT (Era notte a Roma) and VIVA L'ITALIA! (Viva l’Italia).
He died in Rome on 3rd June, 1977.

Ulrich Seidl was born in 1952 in Vienna, Austria. Director, author and producer, he began his career with award-winning documentaries GOOD NEWS (1990), ANIMAL LOVE (1995) and MODELS (1998). In 2001 his feature fiction film debut DOG DAYS won the Grand Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. IMPORT EXPORT (2007), the first film that Seidl made with his own production company, was followed by the hugely successful, award-winning PARADISE Trilogy (2012), whose parts premiered in competition in Cannes, Venice and Berlin. Since then he has directed IN THE BASEMENT (2014) and SAFARI (2016).

Spiros Stathoulopoulos, born in 1977 is a Greek/Colombian director known for the single-continuous-take cult film PVC-1. Selected in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 60th Cannes Film Festival and winner among others of the FIPRESCI Award at the Thessaloniki IFF, PVC-1 features one woman’s race against time in her attempt to gain removal of an explosive terrorist device locked around her neck. Stathoulopoulos studied film in Bogotá, Colombia, before graduating with honors from the California State University. METEORA is his second feature film.

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Shinya Tsukamoto started making short films from the age of 14, using his father's 8mm camera and a cast of friends and relatives. His short THE ADVENTURES OF DENCHU KOZO (1987) won him his first awards and acclaim in Japan, but it was the now legendary cyberpunk feature TETSUO: THE IRON MAN (1989) that saw him catapulted into the big leagues. It influenced a generation of Western filmmakers including Quentin Tarantino, the Wachowski Brothers and Darren Aronofsky. In 1992 he released the sequel TETSUO: THE BODY HAMMER and finalised the unique and hallucinatory TETSUO trilogy in 2009 with TETSUO: THE BULLET MAN.

Passionate about music, Gust Van den Berghe got involved in dance at an early age and performed among others with Praga Khan, the Ballet Royal of Flanders, and Marc Bogaerts. Gust then joined the School of Audiovisual Art of Brussels where he directed his first full-length feature film LITTLE BABY JESUS OF FLANDR, which was selected to compete in the Director’s Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. BLUE BIRD is his second feature film.

Lou Ye, born in 1965, is a Chinese film director. He is part of the so called “Sixth Generation” of Chinese filmmakers who have become internationally influential due to their somber and partly critical observations of modern Chinese society. He garnered international acclaim for his second feature film SUZHOU RIVER (2000) which won the prestigious Tiger Award in Rotterdam. He continued making international successful films PURPLE BUTTERFLY (2003), SUMMER PALACE (2006), and SPRING FEVER (2009) for which he has been invited to the competition of Cannes.