
Valentin Noujaïm
Directing
Biography
Valentin Noujaïm is a French-Lebanese filmmaker and artist based between Paris and Athens. A graduate of La Fémis (FR) and former guest student at the Städelschule (DE), he works across film, installation, sculpture, and research-driven narrative forms, investigating how individuals and communities survive spiritual, political, and architectural collapse. Working across 16mm, Super 8, archival material, digital footage, CCTV systems, and experimental visual effects, Noujaïm constructs hybrid cinematic worlds where myth, memory, and urban legend merge. A central axis of his practice examines the architectures that shape contemporary life — business districts, industrial ruins, financial towers, ports, bunkers, and suburban infrastructures — approached as psychic territories haunted by violence, desire, and the ghosts of modernity. He is the author of the La Défense Trilogy. The first chapter, Pacific Club (2022), premiered at CPH:DOX (DK), where it received a Special Mention, and was shortlisted for the 2024 César Awards. The second film, To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion (2024), had its world premiere in the Tiger Shorts Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), and was later screened at the Centre Pompidou (FR) as part of La Cinémathèque idéale des banlieues du monde, curated by Alice Diop. The final chapter, Demons to Diamonds (2025), premiered at the Museum of Modern Art MoMA (US). His films and installations have been presented at the National Gallery of Art (US), Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, ICA London, Kunsthalle Basel, Momenta Biennale de l'image, the Nimes Triennale, and the Istanbul Biennial, as well as in festivals including Visions du Réel, DocLisboa, BAFICI, DokuFest, BlackStar Film Festival, and Festival International du Film Indépendant de Bordeaux (FR). In 2025, his large-scale solo exhibition Panthéon was held at Kunsthalle Basel, accompanied by the monograph Interzone (Kunsthalle Basel & Mousse Publishing). Noujaïm is currently developing his first feature film, The Last Angel of Beirut.
Known For

A documentary about Berlin's former airport Tempelhof. A film about Departures and Arrivals. And about those Berliners who come here to escape from their daily lives and those refugees who came here to finally arrive somewhere.
Central Airport THF

In 1979, the Pacific Club was opened in the basement of La Défense - the business district of Paris. It was the first nightclub for Arabs from the suburbs; a parallel world of dance, sweat, young loves, and one-night utopias. Azedine, 17 years old at the time, tells us the forgotten story of this club and of this generation who dreamed of integrating into France but who soon came face to face with racism, the AIDS epidemic, and heroin.
Pacific Club
It unfurls a dreamlike atmosphere carried by the haunting melodies and evocative soundscapes of the Space Afrika duo. Inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the film follows the night journey of two young black boys through the abandoned industrial spaces of Manchester, taking forgotten souls back to life. The deserted places are haunted by an opera singer (Axelle Fanyo), who lends a ghostly, lyrical presence to this melancholy universe.
Opera Omnia

Najib, 16, spends his summer on a video game, until his mother, Asma, discovers the death of their elderly and lonely neighbor. He steals the keys to the apartment, and dives into an unexpected world.
Oceania

Alfonse returns to the family château after a long absence. His brother Samuel takes a dim view of this return.
The Remains

On the night their favorite bar closes, Eden, Crystal, and Ibtissame, three young black and arab queer girls, experience strange events: Crystal mysteriously disappears, kidnapped by a purple star. Eden starts looking for the one she loves, until she discovers that Crystal is trapped in another fantastic and strange world...
Daughters of Destiny

In the business district of La Défense, a wave of suicides expose the fractures of a crumbling society. Strangers move through the streets like ghosts, bound by the invisible threads of paranoia. In the eerie glow of a collapsing city, destruction may be the only chance for rebirth.
Demons to Diamonds

The Earth post-pandemic.
Mission Persephone

Claire, a businesswoman promoting a new skyscraper office in La Défense faces increasing scrutiny and isolation. The cold, grey offices amplify her loneliness, driving vivid dreams of setting the tower ablaze.
To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion

It all happened on a dark night. The Man was tired of being a stranger, tired of being insulted by others simply because he speaks Arabic to a wife who speaks French with their beloved mixed race son. He looked at the sky and shouted. But that night, far in the cosmos, a voice answered.
The Blue Star

My family have begun to forget their Egyptian roots and, on asking my grandmother Malo to recount the first part of her life in Cairo, I am confronted by the memories of an exiled Arabic woman, lost in a troubled sea of memories, soon to be erased by the passage of time. I start a tour to trace her steps and understand who she is, and therefore who we are. An Egypt appears where her past, my imaginings and the present Heliopolis mix together as night falls.
Before She Forgets Heliopolis

Karim is a young queer science fiction filmmaker. The grief of his break-up with Paul prevents him from writing the script for his film Nuit de Chine. On his mother's advice, he gives up science fiction to write a film about love. One afternoon at the café, he runs into the hero of his film, Fouad, and falls in love.
Nuit de Chine

Midnight sharp. Two radio journalissts host a dull cultural program. Lights are switched off. A gang of women invades the studio to broadcast a message: “One, two... One, two... This is a coup!” Venus Retrograde explores an erotic, queer coup d’etat through a campy aesthetic and futuristic themes.
Vénus Rétrograde
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