INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION JURY

© Nathalie Mazeas

Ubna Azabal

Native from Belgium, Lubna Azabal studied at the Conservatoire Royal in Brussels. She first started performing on stage before starring in Vincent Lannoo’s short J'adore le cinema with Olivier Gourmet, in 1997. Her talent was revealed in André Téchiné’s Far Away (2001), which was her first step into the film industry in France and worldwide. She garnered both critical and public acclaim with her performances in Tony Gatlif’s Exils (Best Director Award at the 2004 Cannes Festival), Habbu Assad’s Paradise Now (Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006), and most importantly, her unforgettable performance in Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies. She stars in Ralph Fiennes’s upcoming Corialanus.

© R. Martinez

Mathieu  Demy

Born in 1972 to filmmaking parents—Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy—Mathieu’s career in the movie industry started in 1981, when he starred in one of his mother’s films, Documenteur. Since then, he has been acting in comedies and dramas, working with Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, Benoît Cohen, Orso Miret, Pascal Bonitzer, André Téchiné, Emmanuelle Bercot, Jean-Pierre Mocky, Céline Sciamma… In 1999, he launched his own company les Films de l’autre to produce his first shorts. In 2011, he produced and directed his first feature, Americano, to be released this fall.

Thierry Jousse

After working as editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma from 1991 to 1996, Thierry Jousse directed 4 shorts, Le Jour de Noël, Nom de code : Sacha, Julia et les hommes, Buenos Aires Fantasma and a feature film, Les Invisibles, released in 2005. In 2009, he directed the documentary L’Age d’or de la Musique de film. Iconoclastic, pop, offbeat, and creating his own universe, his second feature, Je suis un no man’s land, released early 2011, established him as one of the most stimulating French directors of the past few years.

Pauline Lefrève

Pauline Lefèvre was born in 1981. Her TV career started in 2005 on Direct 8. In 2008, she joined M6, leaving shortly after to join Canal+ where she took over Louise Bourgoin as the Grand Journal weather forecaster. Pauline Lefèvre is not only a TV show host, but also an actress; she made her debut theatre performance in June 2008, in Valentine Valsevierzon’s musical Les fils de…, in which she played Alain Delon’s daughter. In the summer 2010, she starred in Patrice Leconte’s Voir la mer, alongside Clément Sibony and Nicolas Giraud.

Gilles Marchand

Graduated from IDHEC (now FEMIS), where he met Dominik Moll, Vincent Dietschy and Laurent Cantet, Gilles Marchand wrote his first script, Les Sanguinaires, directed by Laurent Cantet. He wrote scripts for many successful French auteur films such as Human Resources and With a Friend Like Harry…, and directed several shorts. With Who Killed Bambi? (2003) and Black Heaven (2010), both selected at the Cannes Festival, he established himself as a master of oddness.