Valérie Massadian

A love story of two women who meet up in their late forties and attempt to retrieve the romance they had in their youth.

A companion to the director's Le Dos Rouge/Portrait of the Artist. A famous filmmaker works on his next film, which will focus on monstrosity. He is obsessed by the idea of finding a painting that will be central to the film and will crystallize all the power and beauty of monsters.

Yakuza Naoki Sando discovers his daughter Hiroko in bed with his adopted son Kohji. Three years later, Kohji is working the streets as a hustler, still yearning for a way to earn his estranged father's approval to continue his borderline incestuous relationship. Hiroko sees a way back to her brother's arms when Sando's shady colleague Marc Tanner absconds to Canada with gambling funds destined for the big boss. Presumably with her father's permission, she calls Kohji and tells him to hurry to Montréal, recover the money and kill Tanner.

For the 30th anniversaire of FIDMarseille about thirty directors have done us the honor of offering us some very beautiful short films.

Haiti, a lonely forgotten black island abandoned to its poverty and misery. A white woman, Madame lives in a fantasy in which she helps to teach, inspire and feed the retched masses of the world. She is in fact completely cut off from them – a continent away. The awakening of desire between Madame and her black servant boy, Patrick, will lead her from her isolation out into the real Haiti, where she will for the first time see and hear the land and its people, discover the reality of her own body, her identity and come face to face with her own mortality.

A young woman struggles to overcome lost love, unplanned motherhood and ghostly apparitions.

Stephen Dwoskin’s final film is a meditation on the subjective experience and cultural concepts of ageing. The film is an ode to the texture, the beauty, the singularity of aging faces and silhouettes, a hypnotic poem in the Dwoskin meaning of the term which is long observations of very tiny details. A gesture, a pause, a look, a moment. Throughout his films intimacy has always played a leading role and this is also true for Age is..., all the faces being close friends, or close friends relatives and sometimes even Stephen himself.

Nana is 4 years old and lives in a stone house beyond the forest. Back from school, a late afternoon, all she finds is silence in the house. A journey into the darkness of her childhood. The world from her height.

No description available.

Evolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.

An old thunderstorm rumbles in my head. A thunderstorm born 25 years ago. A storm at times distant, almost forgotten. A thunderstorm often deafening. Literature assured me men existed for a long time. Music taught me their melancholy preceded them. Painting whispered to me that screams can be silent. The trade of men, very fast, seemed to me vague and vain.

The rules were: one day, one wheel, one shot (no editing). Valérie Massadian’s hypnotic short was made for Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum.

In a remote village, young Luka has already seen the worst. His father's disease and a very close relationship with his mother have made him the man of the house. During the male nurse's daily visit, an unexpected invitation to have lunch awakens his jealousy. He decides, then, to bring his own guest. Freely inspired by Georges Bataille’s childhood.

Marta, Luc and Charlotte, aged twenty-five to thirty-years old, have a lot to share in the city of Paris: friendships, demands and refusals. Ideas grow in the occupied university departments. THE EPISODES - SPRING 2018 is so singular in its approach to existence and so sovereign in the way it establishes its own language that all attempts at defining, assigning a genre or a previously identified aspect of film, are doomed to failure. All we have to do is open up the dictionary: after all, that was Ponge’s reaction when confronting the unknown. « Episode. A work’s division including several parts, each forming a self-sufficient whole. A more or less striking moment in a lifetime. A set of actions, of events forming a whole and making up a striking moment in history or time. »

Filmmakers and artists from around the world have formed Some Strings, a collection of original filmic gestures that originated in Palestine, where poet and professor Refaat Alareer was targeted by Israeli strikes. In his latest poem, “If I Must Die,” he asks those who must live to create a kite, an object of resistance. A selection of short films from this project will introduce the screenings throughout the festival.

Short film commissioned by the Cinemathèque Suisse to celebrate Jean-Marie Straub’s 85th birthday. Directed by Valérie Massadian.

Ire. Feminine noun: wrath, rage, fury, indignation. Ire is the protest of women against those who oppress, despise and kill. Their eyes, tightly framed, stare at the camera: their stare is compelling. They are the masses and, from the anaphoric statement “I am”, sing out the violence suffered by women. In this film shot in four languages, Valérie Massadian uses the weight of her words and the strength of gate to build a babel call to resistance. Among these striking gazes, are the luminous eyes of a woman carrying in her womb a female child, yet to be born, but already angry. (Louise Martin-Papasian & Claire Lasolle – FID 2021)