LabDoc 2021
The second edition of Lab Doc, Meditalents' documentary writing residency, took place in Marseille in 3 sessions of 5 days spread between July 2021 and February 2022.
- The 1st session took place from July 5th to 9th 2021
- The 2nd session took place from October 11th to 16th 2021
- The 3rd session took place from February 3rd to 7th 2022.
The godmother of the second edition of Lab Doc was Catherine Alvaresse, Director of documentaries at France Télévision.
Sara Shazli
A graduate of the American University of Paris in Film Studies, Sara also studied fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal and ESEC, Ecole Supérieure d'Etudes Cinématographiques in Paris. After graduation, she returned to Egypt where she worked as an assistant director and photographer.Her documentary Jo was screened at the Cinemed International Film Festival in Montpellier in 2014 as part of a tribute to Youssef Chahine. In 2017, she began a three-year course at the International School of Cinema and Television (EICTV) in Cuba, specializing in "fiction directing".She then wrote, directed and produced a medium-length film entitled Christmas: a hybrid personal film in which she plays the lead role.Her latest short film Isabel was selected and awarded in 2020 at the Cairo International Film Festival in the Cinema of Tomorrow section.In parallel to her film studies, she worked for two years as an archivist at the Cinémathèque in Paris. She is currently working on a feature documentary project entitled In Search of Woody and on the screenplay for her first feature film In Search of Woody, a film also inspired by her personal story.
À la recherche de Woody
Sara, a lonely little girl, grows up in Cairo with Woody, her Ethiopian nanny. Twenty years later, Sara leaves for Canada, in search of her "heart mother." Family archives and images of the present mingle, childish reverie and harsh reality confront each other. The journey to find Woody takes unexpected paths.What if Sara's quest hid another?
Coraline Molinié
Already as a little girl Coraline wanted to discover the world. So for that, she chose to film it. What better window on elsewhere, on the lives of others? She sees it as an incredible opportunity to experience other cosmologies, to broaden her field of vision, to learn. After studying journalism and documentary filmmaking, she went on an "immersion" trip: 5 years in Cameroon followed by 3 more in Southeast Asia, where she covered news for French and foreign television. At the center of her approach: to apprehend other ways of being in the world. Back in France, she continues my work of putting into perspective, particularly on our relationship to nature and the living world, through her documentary film projects.
A l'école de la forêt
At the beginning of time, humans and animals spoke the same language, they understood each other. To reconnect with this common interiority and allow for the possibility of dialogue, the Artois Forest School, an elementary school located on the edge of a 7-hectare forest in Duisans, near Arras, immerses children in the "wilderness experience. It is the first "school in the wild" in the Hauts-de-France region and this year, an educational project combining wildlife tracking and philosophy is threatening to change the relationship to the world of these little eco-citizens of the world of tomorrow; and ours?
Linda Qibaa
Linda Qibaa lives in Marseille. She studied photography at Icart-Photo. She worked for a while in studios in Paris. She then went back to study philosophy at Paris 8 and then comparative research in anthropology, sociology and history at the EHESS. It is there that she began to be interested in visual anthropology and creative documentary.
Vigiles
A supermarket in which security guards and thieves cross paths, stare at each other and challenge each other. A security headquarters that resembles a watchtower where Victor watches video surveillance screens all day long. He recounts his arrival in France and casts a sharp eye on the world. A factory town, which regains a human dimension and becomes a place of refuge that one can inhabit.
Chiara Tripaldi
Chiara Tripaldi studied screenwriting in Milan and documentary filmmaking in New York. She began working as a screenwriter in 2017, then as a freelance production coordinator on the shooting of short films, music videos and the documentary "Inside the Vatican" for BBC2. In 2020, she is shooting her first documentary, "Fighting America" in New York City. She lives in Rome and recently worked as a story editor for Cattleya.
Controra
"Controra" is a travel-documentary about a city, Taranto, famous above all for the pollution of the Ilva River. Within its perimeter several resistant energies are born: they try to redraw the limits, creating social and cultural spaces. Max, Mirko, Cosimo and Giovanni guide me inside Taranto, the city where I was born and that I left, when I was a child, suddenly. "Controra" is my act of love for her.
Aurélia Makdessi
Aurélia Makdessi is a 39-year-old French-Lebanese director. After studying Modern Letters and Information Sciences at the Sorbonne, and then some experience in TV journalism, she has worked in various positions in the audiovisual industry, mainly in Morocco. First in the production of feature films and shorts, clips, commercials and then in the direction of documentaries, notably for Al Jazeera. Also a teacher of Modern Literature and Cinema for about ten years, she teaches mainly at the French high school in Casablanca until her return to France in 2019.
Entre les courbes
Tripoli, Lebanon, 2021. The great city of the north, alive and anarchic, in which Joe, Bilal, Omar, Ahmad and the others try to build themselves as best they can. To feel alive, free, they practice free running on the concrete curves of the International Fair, an impressive but forgotten work of the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. Abandoned and in ruins, the site is a reflection of the country. Two worlds rub shoulders, two temporalities mingle and try to get by.
Olivier Chantôme
Olivier Chantôme, based in Germany, is a photographer. A sociologist by training and a specialist in Middle Eastern conflicts, he is particularly interested in Lebanon through the memorial aspect. He is currently finalizing a first book half photographic essay half sociological on the city of Tripoli (Lebanon) which will be released by B2 Editions during 2022.
Entre les courbes
Alaa Ashkar
Alaa Ashkar is a Palestinian filmmaker who lives between Galilee and Gironde. He is fluent in French, Arabic and Hebrew. After studying law in Netanya, Israel, he finished a Master's degree in Political Science in France in 2006 which led him to work in the field of international solidarity around the Mediterranean (Egypt, Italy, Israel/Palestine). In 2017 he became interested in independent cinema to express his views on human relations and directed "You reap what you sow", a film that deals with the issue of the memory of Palestinians in Israel. The film won the award for best documentary film at the Lucania festival in Italy.
Les bédouins d’Al Rashaideh
In the West Bank, 20 kilometers south of Bethlehem, a family of Bedouin shepherds has lived in the desert for generations. One day, two representatives of the Israeli army come to tell them bad news: This land is a military zone, the farm is likely to be demolished.
Joel Cartaxo Anjos
Joel Cartaxo Anjos grew up in Portugal, before moving to Paris to study cinema. He graduated from the Master Professionnel Cinéma by the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In 2019, he directed the short film "So far from Kabul", broadcast on France 3 and presented at several festivals. "Elle est partie ailleurs" is his most recent documentary project, winner of the Greek Rush 2021.
Marina
Marina Gulbahari, a famous actress in Afghanistan, is a political refugee in France. Traumatized by a childhood built on the pillars of violence, she decides to cross the borders to find her mother in Iran. This journey, marked by landscapes, encounters and solitude, will confront her with a physical and inner journey. The search for reparation in the face of trauma, in a journey where among the shadows seeks the light: to overcome and surpass her own past.
Laura Farrugia
Laura Farrugia is a director and actor. After studying directing at the University of Glasgow, she worked with the Citizens Theatre and then with the Paprika Theatre Company in Toronto. Since her return to Paris and the making of several short films, she has devoted herself to writing her first feature-length documentary film Bezness and is preparing a short fiction film Marvin which she is co-directing.
Bezness
Bezness: n. Tunisian man expert in sentimental manipulation and ready to do anything for financial compensation or to obtain European papers.My father, his friends, my cousins... everyone seems to have been a Bezness around me. Fascinated by sentimental scams after discovering how my parents met, I go to Tunisia to discover the Bezness, as well as the women who let themselves be seduced by their game.
Shu Aiello
Shu Aiello lives in Marseille. She alternates between director and production manager. She has worked alongside directors as diverse as Jean Louis Comolli, Yossif Pasternak, Yvan Lemoine, Yves Anchar, Jean Yves Collet... As a director, she has written and directed some twenty documentaries for television, many of them devoted to questions of identity and society raised by the colonial history of France and its overseas territories. She has also directed a number of children's fiction series and reports for channel 5.
Leila Kilani
Moroccan director, screenwriter and producer of documentary and fiction films. She will accompany the winners throughout the second edition of Lab Doc. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1970, Leïla KILANI studied economics in Paris, obtaining a DEA in History and Civilization of the Mediterranean before preparing a thesis at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Leïla Kilani has always dreamed of being a clown. Today, she lives between Paris and Tangier.
A freelance journalist since 1997, she turned to documentaries in 1999, with a number of highly acclaimed films: "Tanger, le rêve des brûleurs", 2002, about would-be immigrants to Europe, "Zad Moultaka, passages", 2002, "D'ici et d'ailleurs", a documentary on industrial memory in France, and "Nos lieux interdits" (2008). She then directed "Sur la planche" (2011), her 1st feature-length fiction film, which was selected for the Directors' Fortnight at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and at over 80 festivals. She is currently working on finishing her second feature film: Indivisions.
Claire Dixsaut
Claire Dixsaut has been training audiovisual, film and multimedia professionals in the art of pitching for 23 years. She teaches at the Fémis, SCAM, INA, production companies and broadcasters. She shares tips and tricks on her website lepitch.art.
Claire Dixsaut has worked for Arte, for Canal+ documentaries, and as head of international co-productions at Turner/TimeWarner. She then oversaw multimedia content at Microsoft France.
Nicole Levigne
Production manager at Cinéphage.
Tina Baz
Tina Baz, sometimes credited as Tina Le Gal or Tina Baz Le Gal, is a French-Lebanese editor born in 1970 in Beirut.
She is a regular collaborator of Naomi Kawase and Sébastien Lifshitz. For the latter, for example, she edited Adolescentes, which won her a César for best editing.
" In a world at a standstill and a society that is increasingly fragmented, fractured and inward-looking, how can we project ourselves into the future and dream about it?
Yet a future remains possible, by rediscovering hope and self-affirmation. And the documentary genre, which helps us gain perspective, is invaluable today for deciphering and sharing our collective and intimate experiences. I hope the LabDoc Mediterranean Encounters will be a wonderful opportunity for everyone to meet and express themselves, on the shores of the promising Mediterranean Sea. "