Luc Dardenne was born in Awirs, 10 March 1954.

Luc had studied philosophy and sociology. During the 1970s the brothers would make a series of politically engaged documentary films before founding their own production company in 1975: “Dérives”.  Some years later, in 1994, they would found their film company: “Les Films du Fleuve”.  They made their first full-length film, “Falsch”, in 1987; it was an adaptation of a theatre play concerning the last surviving member of a Jewish family exterminated by the Nazis.  The film would mark a major turning point in their career as their first fictional work.

In 1992 they directed “Je pense à vous”, but would have to wait until 1996 before receiving wider recognition at the ‘Directors Fortnight’ in Cannes with “La Promesse” (The Promise).  They received their first Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for “Rosetta” in 1999.  Three years later Olivier Gourmet received the Festival’s Best Actor award for his role in “Le Fils” (The Son).  In 2005 the brothers received another Palme d’Or for “L’Enfant” (The Child), thus joining the very exclusive club of filmmakers to have won the Palme d’Or on two occasions.  Furthermore at Cannes, they would also receive the 2008 Best Screenplay award for “Le Silence de Lorna” (Lorna’s Silence)”, a drama about clandestine immigrants; and the 2011 Grand Prix award for “Le Gamin au Vélo” (Kid With a Bike).

After this they went on to make “Deux jours, une nuit” (Two Days, One Night) with the actress Marion Cotillard and “La Fille inconnue” (The Unknown Girl) with Adèle Haenel.  In 2019 they received the Cannes Film Festival’s Best Director award for “Le Jeune Ahmed” (Young Ahmed), a film about the destiny of a teenager embracing Islamic extremism.

The Dardenne brothers have won a special 75th–anniversary prize for ‘TORI AND LOKITA in Cannes Film Festival this year.

Arnaud Desplechin grew up in the northern French town of Roubaix. He attended the IDHEC film school in Paris and made two short films during his studies. At graduation, he had already written the screenplay for his feature début La sentinelle (1992), which would world premiere in the official competition of the 45th edition of Cannes Film Festival. He then made My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument (1996), which introduced a new generation of actors and received the César trophy for Most Promising Actor for Mathieu Amalric’s performance. In 2016 Arnaud received a César for Best Directing for My Golden Days. His most recent feature is Brother and Sister, which world premiered this year in the official competition at Cannes Film Festival.

Tarik Saleh started as one of the top graffiti artists in Stockholm in the 80’s. He directed and wrote the screenplay for The Nile Hilton Incident that won ‘The Grand Jury Prize’ at Sundance 2017, received a Guldbagge Award for ‘Best Film’ in 2018, was nominated as ‘Best Foreign Film’ at the César Awards and was a box office hit with more than 400,000 tickets sold in France.

He directed action thriller, The Contractor (2022) with staring Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Kiefer Sutherland. Several episodes of the futuristic HBO-series Westworld (2018) and Showtimes-series Ray Donovan. The thriller Tommy (2014) with Ola Rapace, Moa Gammel and singer-songwriter Lykke Li for whom he also directed the music video I Follow Rivers that have about 80 million views on YouTube. His film debut came with Metropia (2009), a dystopic animation with Stellan Skarsgård, Juliette Lewis, Vincent Gallo and Udo Kier.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival as the opening film for Critics’ Week. Tarik Saleh also directed the documentaries Gitmo: The New Rules of War (2005) and Sacrificio: Who Betrayed Che Guevara (2001) together with Erik Gandini. Tarik Saleh founded the production company Atmo with producer Kristina Åberg.

Stéphane Brizé was born in 1966. He has directed nine features, among them Not Here to Be Loved, Mademoiselle Chambon (César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2010), A Few Hours of Spring and The Measure of a Man. The latter was selected in the official competition at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where Vincent Lindon won the Best Actor Award, followed by a César. A Woman’s Life, the adaptation of Maupassant’s novel of the same title, followed. This film had its world premiere in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2016, later winning the Louis Delluc Award.

In 2018 his next film At War screened in the competition at Cannes. Several of these films explore the financialization of economy showing the effects of this trend on regular people. Another World, his newest film, was shown in the competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 and later became a box office hit in France when it was released in February 2022.

Thomas Salvador is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor in his own films. He has directed six short films that have been selected and awarded in numerous festivals, including Petits pas (Cannes Directors’ Fortnight) and De sortie (Jean Vigo Prize 2006). Hosted at the Villa Medici in Rome, he wrote his first feature film Vincent, released in 2015 and selected in more than forty festivals in France and abroad. His second feature, The Mountain, world premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, winning the SACD Award.

Italian, born in Turin on February 22, 1966

Stefano Francia di Celle is a cultural manager, film historian, and curator. He studied in Turin, receiving a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in film history and critique (with honors and publication recommended). At an early age, he began collaborating with important film institutions, in Turin and throughout Italy: Festival da Sodoma a Hollywood, National Film Archive of the Resistance, Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani, Taormina Film Fest, Bellaria Film Festival, Rai Radiotelevisione Italiana. He curated retrospectives and monographs for the Torino Film Festival from 2003 to 2010, organizing events which saw the participation of important directors such as Roman Polanski, Wim Wenders, and Claude Chabrol.

His collaboration with Rai became steady in 1996, when he began a bright and rising career overseeing the programming of movies, art house cinema, and cultural programs for Rai3. This role allowed him to develop curatorial facets in a popularizing key and to bring to light and further develop his managerial talents.

Between 2004 and 2010, he was the president and producer of Il Vento del Cinema at Procida, an event dedicated to the interaction between film and philosophy, attended by important directors and internationally-famous philosophers.

In 2008, he began collaborating with the Fondazione Prada on film projects, high points of which saw the participation of Alejandro González Iñarritu, Agnès Varda, Nicolas Winding Refn, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Pedro Almodóvar. He thus has experience in dealing with celebrities and is familiar with the logic of brand sponsorship for film-related cultural initiatives.

Since 2012, he has been collaborating with the Venice International Film Festival as the curator of the section Venice Classics.

He has been artistic director of Torino Film Festival in 2020 and 2021.

Giovanni Marchini Camia is a member of the Locarno Film Festival’s selection committee for feature films, as well as the co-founder of the publishing house Fireflies Press and a film critic for publications including Sight & Sound and Film Comment.

Lorenzo Esposito is a programmer and curator. He is a member of the selection committee of the Berlin International Film Festival. He is also currently an international consultant on Italy to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, and is the editor of the online cinema magazine “Film Parlato”. From 2013 to 2018 he was a member of the selection committee of the Locarno Film Festival. Previously he worked on programmes for the film festivals in Venice (2001), Turin (from 2002 to 2006) and the Rome Film Fest in 2007. In 2003 he began working for “Fuori Orario”, a programme broadcast by the Italian public TV channel Rai 3, curating shows about films and directors.

Former editor-in-chief of the Magazine littéraire, Hervé Aubron is a critic for Cahiers du cinéma and a selector for the Quinzaine des cinéastes. He has long taught cinema at the University of Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle and intervenes as a trainer or lecturer in cinemas and for various institutions (Cinémathèque française, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Forum des images…). He is also the author of essays on David Lynch and the Pixar studios, as well as two books devoted to Werner Herzog, in collaboration with Emmanuel Burdeau.

Evgeny Gusyatinskiy is a programmer of International Film Festival Rotterdam and a frequent writer on films and culture.

He did his MA in film studies in Moscow at VGIK and for several years worked as an editor as well as contributor of Iskusstvo Kino (Film Art Monthly), one of the oldest film magazines in Europe. He is also a member of the selection committee of Kinotavr Film Festival (Sochi).

Alessandro Del Vigna (b. 1993) is an Italian-Romanian producer and writer. He is an executive producer of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, which received the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. He is an executive producer of Abel Ferrara’s Siberia, which received a Golden Bear nomination after it premiered at the 70th Berlin Film Festival.

He is a co-founder of the production company Fantasmagoria. He is a former film critic who has contributed articles and interviews with William Friedkin, Joe Dante, Bret Easton Ellis, and Emir Kusturica to La Septième Obsession and Positive Magazine.