Michel Houellebecq is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Houellebecq published his first novel, Whatever, in 1994. His next novel, Atomised, published in 1998, brought him international fame as well as controversy. Platform followed in 2001. He has published several books of poetry, including The Art of Struggle in 1996.
Jacques Demy was a French director, screenwriter and lyricist. He appeared at the height of the French New Wave alongside contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrated for their visual style, which drew upon diverse sources such as classic Hollywood musicals, the plein-air realism of his French New Wave colleagues, fairy tales, jazz, Japanese manga, and the opera. His films contain overlapping continuity, lush musical scores and motifs like teenage love, labor rights, chance encounters, incest, and the intersection between dreams and reality. He was married to Agnès Varda, another prominent director of the French New Wave. Demy is best known for the two musicals he directed in the mid-1960s: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
Steven E. de Souza is an American screenwriter, producer and director of film and television. He is known for writing several high-profile action films of the 1980s and '90s, notably 48 Hrs., Commando, The Running Man, Die Hard and its first sequel, Hudson Hawk, and Judge Dredd.
René Balcer is a Canadian-American television writer, director, producer, and showrunner, as well as a photographer and documentary film-maker.
Léa Pool C.M. is a Canadian and Swiss filmmaker who taught film at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has directed several documentaries and feature films, many of which have won significant awards including the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, and she was the first woman to win the prize for Best Film at the Quebec Cinema Awards. Pool's films often opposed stereotypes and refused to focus on heterosexual relations, preferring individuality.
William Klein was an American-born French photographer and filmmaker noted for his ironic approach to both media and his extensive use of unusual photographic techniques in the context of photojournalism and fashion photography. He was ranked 25th on Professional Photographer's list of 100 most influential photographers.
Danielle Arbid is a French filmmaker of Lebanese origin who has been directing films since 1997.
Michel Kammoun is a Lebanese-French film director. He is mostly known for his 2006 feature film Falafel, which won Golden Bayard for Best Film in 2006 Festival International du Film Francophone de Namur.
Catherine Jacob is a French film and theatre actress who has won a César Award for her role in Life Is a Long Quiet River (1988), and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Tatie Danielle (1990), Merci la vie (1991) and Neuf mois (1994). She has been two-time president of the Lumières Award. She is known for her voice and her charisma.
Jonathan A. Levine is an American film director and screenwriter.
Blanca Li, originally Blanca María Gutiérrez Ortiz is a Spanish choreographer, film director, dancer, and actress.
Mars & Avril is a 2012 Canadian science fiction film starring Jacques Languirand, Caroline Dhavernas, Paul Ahmarani and Robert Lepage. The movie, based on the photo-novels of the same name published by Sid Lee & la Pastèque, is written, produced and directed by Martin Villeneuve.
The DC Independent Film Festival (DCIFF) is a film festival in Washington, D.C. Launched in 1999, DCIFF exhibits features, animation, shorts and documentaries from around the world, focusing on cutting-edge ideas, new visions and advances in the craft of filmmaking. The festival hosts world premieres, seminars, and workshops, and also sponsors discussions on topics that impact independent filmmakers, in particular the annual "On the Hill" hearing hosted by the Congressional Entertainment Caucus. The festival includes a dedicated POLIDOCS section for documentary films that shed light on human rights, politics and social justice and an international high school film competition started in 2013. The festival also has an oral history collection program Going to the Movies documenting the role of movie-watching in US cultural history.
Martin Villeneuve is a Canadian screenwriter, producer, director, actor, and art director. He was nominated at the Canadian Screen Award in 2013 for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Mars et Avril, his feature film debut. He is also known for The 12 Tasks of Imelda, his second feature film released in 2022, in which he portrays his own grandmother, and for his animated series Red Ketchup which premiered in 2023. Villeneuve previously worked for Cirque du Soleil as an artistic director for commercials and films.
Anita Doron is a Hungarian-Canadian film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, author, and a 2010 TED Fellow. Doron is best known for her 2012 film adaptation of the 1996 novel The Lesser Blessed, written by Canadian author Richard Van Camp.
Dimitri Logothetis is a Greek-American filmmaker and actor.
Jennifer Phang is an American filmmaker, most known for her feature films Advantageous (2015) and Half-Life (2008). Advantageous premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, winning a Special Jury Award for Collaborative Vision, and was based on her award-winning short film of the same name. Half-Life premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and won "Best Film" awards at a number of film festivals including the Gen Art Film Festival, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival as well an "Emerging Director Award" at the Asian American International Film Festival.
Brett Goldstein is an English actor, comedian, writer, producer, and podcaster. Known for his role as Roy Kent in the Apple TV+ sports comedy series Ted Lasso, he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for each of the first two seasons. He is also the co-creator of the comedy series Shrinking (2023).
Aleksandar Davić was a Serbian film director and screenwriter.
Olivier Magis is a Belgian director of several award-winning documentaries.
