 |
Karin Albou is a French-Algerian female director, writer, editor, producer and actress.
|
Karin Albou is a French-Algerian female director, writer, editor, producer and actress.
Karin Albou was born on March 12, 1968 [1] in Neuilly-sur-Seine to Jewish Algerian immigrant parents. Her mother was only 16 when she was born. [2]
In 1999 she moved to Tunisia. A year later, she returned to Paris and started her career as a filmmaker and as a writer.
As a child, Albou was always involved with dance and singing. After high school, Karin continued to study dance, but also studied literature and drama, eventually enrolling in a film school in Paris. She studied screenwriting but discovered she wanted to be a director while taking classes at École Supérieure de Réalisation Audiovisuelle. After graduating, she released her first short film, Hush!.
Albou made her feature film debut in 2005 with Little Jerusalem, which debuted in the International Critics' Week section at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Despite being Albou's first feature film, she was disqualified from competing for the Camera d'Or, awarded to the best first film playing at the festival, because she had previously directed a made-for-TV movie. [3]
In 2008 Albou released her second feature film The Wedding Song , a Holocaust drama set in Tunisia in 1942 that was loosely inspired by letters Albou's paternal grandmother had sent to her husband during the war when he was sent to a labour camp. [4] The film played multiple Jewish festivals but failed to garner mainstream attention, something Albou attributed to the many scenes of graphic nudity in the film. [5] Albou's third feature film My Shortest Love Affair, which she co-starred in, was released in 2015. [6]
Karin's heritage explains some of the themes she chooses to cover. Raised in the Jewish faith, Karin's films explore the lasting trauma of the Holocaust [7] – French colonialism, [8] secret identity, [9] exile, assimilation, [10] and double diaspora. [11]
The director also explores and challenges the rules of religion and marriage and the themes of love, sex and family values. [12] Her themes involve bringing intimate scenes of female spaces, tackling sexual dysfunction in marriage and uncovering how culture impacts the idea of romance. [13] Karin keeps these themes consistent in her films and portrays them with her unique film style. Her style focuses on the representation of women. [14] In The Wedding Song, the film style displays a lesbian, female, and Orientalist gaze.
| This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(January 2022) |
| Year | Award | Category | Film | Result |
| 1992 | Cinécinéma [17] | Best First Film | Chut | Won |
| 1999 | Clermont - Ferrand International Short Film Festival [17] | Best Short for National Film Competition | Aïd El Kebir | Won |
| 2005 | Beirut International Film Festival (BIFF) [18] | Best Feature | Little Jerusalem | Won |
| 2005 | Crit Week at Cannes Film Festival | Best Screenplay | Little Jerusalem | Won |
| 2005 | Crit Week at Cannes Film Festival | Best Feature | Little Jerusalem | Nominated |
| 2005 | Deauville Festival | Michel d’Ornano Award [17] | Little Jerusalem | Won |
| 2006 | Cesar Awards [17] | Best First Film | Little Jerusalem | Nominated |
| 2006 | Cesar Awards [17] | French Academy Cesar | Little Jerusalem | Nominated |
| 2007 | Cesar Awards [17] | Best First Film | Little Jerusalem | Nominated |
| 2007 | Jewish Film Festival Berlin [19] | - | Little Jerusalem | Screened |
| 2008 | Young Directors Festival of Saint-Jean-De-Luz [17] | Public Prize | The Wedding Song | Won |
| 2008 | Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival [17] | Special Mention of the Jury | The Wedding Song | Won |
| 2009 | New York Jewish Film Festival [19] | - | The Wedding Song | Screened |
| 2009 | Seattle International Film Festival [19] | - | The Wedding Song | Screened |
| 2012 | International Images Film Festival, Harare [20] | Best Film | The Wedding Song | Won |
| 2012 | International Images Film Festival, Harare [20] | Best Depiction | The Wedding Song | Won |
| 2012 | International Images Film Festival, Harare [20] | Best Director | The Wedding Song | Won |
The Wedding Song was nominated for 6 awards at the 10th edition of the International Images Film Festival, Harare [20]
Kathryn Grayson was an American actress and coloratura soprano.
Capucine was a French fashion model and actress known for her comedic roles in The Pink Panther (1963) and What's New Pussycat? (1965). She appeared in 36 films and 17 television productions between 1948 and 1990.
Rosanna Lisa Arquette is an American actress. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance in the TV film The Executioner's Song (1982) and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for the film Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Her other film roles include After Hours, The Big Blue (1988), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Crash (1996). She also directed the documentary Searching for Debra Winger (2002) and starred in the ABC sitcom What About Brian? from 2006 to 2007.
Keep Not Silent is a 2004 Israeli documentary film directed and produced by Ilil Alexander about three lesbians in Jerusalem. Ilil had just graduated from Tel-Aviv University Film School.
Puan Sri Chelsia Chan, also known as Chan Chau Ha is Hong Kong based actress and singer-songwriter. Chan joined the music industry after winning the first prize at an amateur creative singing contest in 1975 in Hong Kong with the English song "Dark Side of Your Mind", which she composed with lyrics provided by her then-manager Pato Leung. Later, this became one of her best remembered songs. In 1976, at the age of 19, she won the leading actress award at Taiwan's Golden Horse Film Festival for the movie "Qiu Xia" which incidentally is also her own birth name. She is so far the youngest winner with the shortest screen life in the Festival's history. Chan used to sing along with the Hong Kong group, The Wynners.
Little Jerusalem is a 2005 French drama film directed by Karin Albou. Albou's film depicts how the conflict between the rational and the irrational drives the relationships within a Jewish family living in the outskirts of Paris.
Miri Mesika is an Israeli singer and actress. She is most known for winning several Israeli Female Singer of the Year awards, selling more than 200,000 copies of her albums in Israel, and for her portrayal of the title role of Dina in the West End production of The Band's Visit, for which she was nominated for the 2023 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical.
Flory Jagoda was a Bosnian Jewish–born American guitarist, composer and singer-songwriter. She was known for her composition and interpretation of Sephardic songs, Judeo-Espanyol (Ladino) songs and the Bosnian folk ballads, sevdalinka. Her most famous song is the Hanukah standard, "Ocho Kandelikas."
Lizzie Brocheré is a French film, television, and theatre actress who began working as a child actress in 1995. She moved to English-speaking roles in the early 2010s, with appearances in dark comedic and dramatic pieces from Jean-Marc Barr, Eric Schaeffer and Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy.
Aviva Kempner is a German-born American filmmaker. Her documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history and focus on the untold stories of Jewish people. She is most well known for The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg.
The École supérieure de réalisation audiovisuelle is a French private film school which specialises in the training of cinema, television, photography, sound engineering and digital art through the DESRA diploma, the DESTS and the DESFA.
Dana Ivgy is an Israeli actress and the daughter of actor Moshe Ivgy.
Kenza Fourati is a Tunisian model.
Juju Factory is a 2007 film.
The Wedding Song is a 2008 Franco-Tunisian film. It is the second film of director-writer Karin Albou who also appeared in the film in a small role as the mother of lead character Myriam.
My Wedding and Other Secrets is a 2011 romantic comedy film directed by Roseanne Liang, written by Liang and Angeline Loo, and produced by South Pacific Pictures. The film is based on Liang's real-life cross-cultural romance.
Lava is a 2014 American animated musical short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. Directed and written by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren, it premiered at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival on June 14, 2014, and was theatrically released alongside Pixar's Inside Out, on June 19, 2015.
Taïeb Louhichi was a Tunisian film director, screenwriter, producer and filmmaker. His best known works include his debut feature film, Shadow of the Earth (1982), Layla, My Reason (1989), and La Danse Du Vent (2004).
Siegrid Alnoy is a French director and screenwriter. She has directed and written several shorts, as well as two television films and one feature film. She is best known for her feature film Elle est des Nôtres(She's One of Us) which has won several awards and was shown at the Cannes Film Festival.
My Love Affair with Marriage is a 2022 semi-autobiographical adult animated musical comedy-drama film animated, written and directed by Signe Baumane, her second feature following Rocks in My Pockets (2014). The story follows a young woman, Zelma, on her 23-year quest for Perfect Love and Lasting Marriage set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe. Pressured by Mythology Sirens to be the ideal woman and unable to free herself from the biology of her own brain, Zelma finds love and loses it multiple times before discovering who she really is. Told from a female point of view, this is a coming-of-age story of love, gender, marriage, abuse, hopes, fantasies, and ultimately, finding a better place for women in society.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
