Isidore Bethel

Last updated
Isidore Bethel
Born
CitizenshipUnited States
France
Education Harvard
École Normale Supérieure
SAIC
Occupations
  • filmmaker
  • professor
Years active2011–present
Works Acts of Love
What We Leave Behind
Of Men and War
Honors Filmmaker's 25 New Faces [1]
Chéries-Chéris Jury Prize [2]
DOC NYC "40 Under 40" [3]

Isidore Bethel is a French-American filmmaker who was among Filmmaker's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2020 and DOC NYC's "40 Under 40" in 2023. [4] [5] The films he edits, directs, and produces use filmmaking to make sense of overwhelming experiences and touch on recurrent themes of displacement, sexuality, aging, trauma, grief, therapy, and art-making. [6] His first feature film as director, Liam, premiered at the Boston LGBT Film Festival in 2018 and received the Jury Prize in the Documentary section of the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival. [7] [8] His second film, Acts of Love, which French actor Francis Leplay co-directed, premiered at Hot Docs, received the Tacoma Film Festival's Best Feature Award, and appeared on MovieWeb's list of the top LGBTQ+ films of 2021. [9] [10] [11]

Contents

Films he has edited have screened at Cannes, SXSW, and the Berlinale, in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Beirut Art Center, and the Pompidou Center, and on broadcast platforms such as POV , The New York Times' Op-Docs, and Netflix. [12] [13] [14] [15] He has worked in France, Mexico, and the United States with directors such as Dominique Cabrera, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Juan Pablo González, Laurent Bécue-Renard, Juan Manuel Sepúlveda, Arturo González Villaseñor, Daniel Hymanson, and Iliana Sosa. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] He has also collaborated with filmmakers in Lebanon, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, India, and Turkey. [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] He acts as a producer on many of the films that he edits, which have received support from the Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, the CNC in France, and Mexico's IMCINE and FONCA funds. [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] Critics have characterized his editing as demonstrative of "admirable restraint," "tender," "astute," and "elegant." [34] [35] [36] [37]

A graduate of Harvard University, the École Normale Supérieure, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bethel has received funding from the Institut Français, France's Île-de-France region, the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation, and the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation as well as support from Berlinale Talents, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Villa Medici, the Gotham, Film Independent, the Logan Nonfiction Program, and Eurodoc. [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] He has taught at Stone Soup's filmmaking workshop, Sundance's Art of Editing fellowship, Sarah Lawrence College's Paris campus, La Fémis, and Parsons Paris. [51] [52] [53] [54]

Filmography

Feature films

YearTitleEditorDirectorProducerWriterNotes
2013 Grandir YesNoNoNoDirected by Dominique Cabrera. ACID Cannes. [55]
2014 Of Men and War YesNoYesNoCredited as associate producer. Directed by Laurent Bécue-Renard. Cannes Film Festival.
2016 La Balada del Oppenheimer Park YesNoYesNoDirected by Juan Manuel Sepúlveda. Best Documentary nominee at the Mexican Academy Awards. [56]
2018 Caballerango YesNoNoNoDirected by Juan Pablo González. IDFA. [57]
2018 Liam NoYesYesYesJury Prize in the Documentary section of the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival.
2020 So Late So Soon YesNoYesNoCredited as associate producer. Directed by Daniel Hymanson. True/False. [58]
2021 Acts of Love NoYesYesYesCo-directed with Francis Leplay. Hot Docs.
2022 What We Leave Behind YesNoYesYesDirected by Iliana Sosa. Louis Black Lone Star and Fandor New Voices Awards at SXSW. [59]
2023HummingbirdsYesNoYesNoCredited as co-producer. Directed by Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía Contreras. Generation 14plus Grand Prize at the Berlinale. [60]
2023The Taste of MangoYesNoNoNoDirected by Chloe Abrahams. BFI London Audience Award, BIFA for Best Debut Director. [61] [62]

Short films

YearTitleEditorDirectorProducerWriterNotes
2011"Someone I Love or Someone Who I Want to Be"YesYesYesYesHarvard Hoopes Prize. [63]
2013"Goat Milk"YesNoNoNoDirected by Dominique Cabrera. Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival. [64]
2016"We Eat the Earth/The Earth Eats Us"YesNoYesNoCredited as associate producer. Directed by Lucy Pawlak. Athens Digital Arts Festival. [65]
2016"We Died and Here We Are"YesNoYesNoDirected by Mohamad Kanaan. Ashkal Alwan's Video Works 2016 at the Beirut Art Center. [66]
2021"Some Kind of Intimacy"YesNoYesYesDirected by Toby Bull. Sundance London. [67]
2022"Blue Room"YesNoYesNoCredited as associate producer. Directed by Merete Mueller. AFI Fest. [68]
2022"Suddenly TV"YesNoNoNoCredited as consulting editor. Directed by Roopa Gogineni. Documentary Short Special Jury Award at SXSW. [69]

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References

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