Paris 2026 Programme

Haunted by questions of disappearance, loss, and revolutionary struggle, An Impossible Address continues Sanzgiri’s examination of the life of Sita Valles and the bonds of solidarity that developed between India and Africa against the Portuguese empire. Combining 16 mm film with digital animation, hand processing, and 3D scanning, the film is a kaleidoscopic and sonically vibrant experimental personal essay shot across Angola, Goa, and Portugal.

Suneil Sanzgiri is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher. His award-winning work has been screened and exhibited extensively at festivals and arts venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Doclisboa, Viennale, 18th Istanbul Biennial, lo Schermo dell’Arte, de Appel, Jameel Arts Center, Whitechapel Gallery, MASS MoCA, e-Flux, Hessel Museum, Criterion Collection, and many more. His first institutional solo exhibition, “Here the Earth Grows Gold,” opened at the Brooklyn Museum in Fall 2023. Other solo exhibitions include “An Impossible Address” at Mercer Union in Toronto, Canada (2025), and at EMPAC (Electronic Media and Performing Arts Center) in Troy, NY (2025). His work has been written about in BOMB Magazine, MOUSSE, e-Flux, Art in America, Filmmaker Magazine, Film Comment, Hyperallergic, the Brooklyn Rail, C Magazine, Film Quarterly, SEEN Journal, Dissent, November Magazine, and more.

Go Ye Afar, follows the journey of an Irish-Nigerian taxi driver on a miraculous voyage through the streets of Dublin and Calabar. Beginning his night shift in Dublin Airport’s taxi holding area, the driver picks up a series of passengers, each entangled in the historic and present day relationships between Ireland and Nigeria. The taxi seems to possess supernatural characteristics, conjuring dreamlike images in the minds of its passengers, and using symbolic sites of connection and departure as portals to move fluidly between distant locations. Central to the film is an enquiry into the politics of movement, and how the freedom, or necessity, of travel is often defined by nationality, class, or economy. Exploring ways that travelling has manifested in religious practice, Go Ye Afar highlights several instances in Christianity, from the Motorists’ Prayer and St. Christopher medals, to evangelisation and the missions.

Frank Sweeney (Director/Writer) is an artist with a research based practice, using found material to approach questions of collective memory, experience and identity through film and sound.Recent work includes ‘Few Can See’ (winner of the Tiger Shorts Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Second Diamond Award at Alcine 53, Special Mention at Filmadrid Awards, commissioned by EVA International-Ireland’s Biennial), ‘People enjoy my company’ (Best Documentary at LUFF Switzerland, IMMA 2021-22, Transmediale Berlin, BFI Southbank LSFF 2022) and ‘Made Ground’ (collaboration with Eva Richardson McCrea, Temple Bar Gallery 2021, purchased for the Arts Council Collection in 2021).

In 2020, a New York Times journalist suggested that Mehdi Ben Barka, a prominent Moroccan politician and co-founder of the Tricontinental, who disappeared in Paris in 1965, may have been buried beneath the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a contemporary art museum on the outskirts of Paris. Halloubi is drawn to the idea that a revolutionary from the Global South could be buried in a postmodern building emblematic of the glory of late capitalism. He began a video installation reconstructing in 3D the body of Ben Barka wandering through the museum like a ghost, haunting the era of neoliberal ascendancy in a time of genocide in Gaza. This work refers to Derrida’s Specters of Marx, where he argues that Marxism should not be seen as an obsolete dogma, but rather as a “specter” that continues to haunt our present and call for a justice yet to come. In this piece, Ben Barka endlessly questions his spectral identity, generated by technology. Even without memory, he remains animated by a moral and revolutionary drive, continuing to haunt the present.

Hamza Halloubi is an artist, filmmaker, and writer, born in Tangier (Morocco) and based in Brussels. He works with film, video, and painting. He develops a body of work that questions dominant artistic narratives and the tensions between visibility and silence. His oeuvre is part of an approach that seeks to decentralize Western modern and contemporary narratives. Halloubi explores and speaks from "the minor places of culture," calling upon intellectual and artistic figures such as Edward Said, Mehdi Ben Barka, Jean Genet, Jane Bowles, and Cherifa, whom he invokes in order to challenge cultural hierarchies. Rejecting the spectacular, he favours subtle gestures. He conceives the act of filming as an ambiguous gesture-both powerful and vulnerable-often imbued with shame or doubt, and he refuses any form of identity essentialization. He had solo exhibitions at, among others, De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2025, 2020, 2015, NL); Argos - Centre for Audiovisual Arts, Brussels (2021,2022, BE); tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam (2022, 2020, NL), L'appartement 22, Rabat (2019, MA); Museo Hermann Nitsch, Naples (2017, IT); A Tale of A Tub, Rotterdam (2016, NL); KIOSK, Ghent (2014, BE); and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2013, BE).

A transgender girl looks for love in the last surviving porn cinema in France. But where is everyone?

Diego Semerene is a Brazilian filmmaker and scholar based in the Netherlands, where they teach at the University of Amsterdam.

En 2014, à Lourdes, il demande à la Vierge Marie un miracle : faire son deuil, partir à la ville, devenir cinéaste et rencontrer l’Amour. Quelques années plus tard, il retourne à Elle, hanté par les addictions, les fantômes et le doute. Entre prière et confession, Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou explore sous diverses formes cinématographiques et plastiques les territoires troubles d’une existence tiraillée entre le désir et la disparition, la foi et la solitude. Dans l’espace clos de son appartement, les souvenirs remontent, les morts s’invitent et les images confrontent la réalité.

Originaire d’Écrosnes en région Centre, Mathieu Morel développe depuis plusieurs années une œuvre cinématographique prolifique et protéiforme, à la croisée du mélodrame fantaisiste, de l’érotisme, de la parodie et du cinéma expérimental. Avec ses sœurs, il fonde le collectif Rabbit Hole, avant de participer avec Léolo à la création de Horschamp, association consacrée à la transmission de la parole et des pratiques artistique. Diplômé de La Fémis, où son travail reçoit les félicitations du jury, il construit un vaste corpus de courts et moyens métrages, parmi lesquels Aussi fort que tu peux, Anapidae (appelle-moi), La Belle et la Bête, Yaoi Dumb Bitch, The Deep Queer Massacre et Cum in My Heart (ou le fabuleux lâcher-prise de Thomas Timbère). Son travail a fait l’objet d’une monographie à la Cinémathèque française et d’une rétrospective au festival Wallpurgis. Il a notamment reçu le prix Jean Cocteau à Los Angeles et le prix du meilleur film au Berlin Porn Film Festival, ainsi que plusieurs autres distinctions. Ses films ont été sélectionnés dans de nombreux festivals en France et à l’étranger. À travers le collage, la profusion plastique, les masques, les détournements de genres et les formes de l’installation, Mathieu Morel explore les liens entre sexualité, fantasme, violence, poésie et construction de soi. Son parcours a également été soutenu à trois reprises par le CNC.

A fictional manifesto by working-class men from Turkey who desire to be more sexually fetishized. Subverting nationalism with the tools of gay pornography, this essay film mocks today’s sexual caution and the art world’s romanticization of the lower classes. Scenes of demolishing buildings merge with the poetic view of a harbor under snow, paralleling the contrast between the aggressiveness of physical labor and the emotional vulnerability of hardworking men.

Nadir Sönmez (b. 1989) is an Istanbul-based artist, actor, writer and director. His work engages with sexual politics, porn studies, gay tourism and queer activism in Turkey and beyond. He studied theatre at Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle and holds an MA from Kadir Has University. He is a fellow of Paris Cité Internationale des Arts, Kulturakademie Tarabya, and Berlin Theatertreffen's International Forum. His writing has been published by Sharjah Biennial and in Duke University Press's journal Theater. His debut feature Ama streamed on MUBI. His video Cruising was screened at Iniva in London, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, and MoMA’s Doc Fortnight in New York.

Jeanet Film Adulte (2025), a film co-produced with steirischer herbst and NW, Open House for Contemporary Art and Film, and made in collaboration with residents from Aalst. Shot across two editions of the city’s carnival, the work follows the figure of the Voil Jeanet : men cross-dressing as caricatures of the sex worker, poor mother and madwoman. The film opens in reverse—at night, after the party—a cinematic gesture that echoes Carnival’s core logic of inversion. Beginning near the factory in central Aalst, the camera roots the work in the city’s industrial and working-class history, binding the spectacle to its infrastructural and social underbelly, even as those conditions have shifted. What starts in an atmosphere of quiet unease gives way to glitter, prosthetic flesh, plastic breasts and genitals, baby heads between thighs, and gore in full daylight. Costumes appear as both disguise and weapon, exposing the violence of stereotype while indulging in its grotesque excess.

Pauline Curnier Jardin was born in 1980 in Marseille. A visual artist, filmmaker, and performer, she holds degrees from several institutions in Europe (ENSAPC and ENSAD in Paris, the Goldrauschkunstlerinnen Projekt Stipendium in Berlin, and Linköping University in Sweden). She is a lecturer in the Master of Fine Arts program at ZHdK in Zurich and a mentor for the De Ateliers residency program in Amsterdam. She co-founded the all-female cabaret show The Vraoums in 2007 and the Feel Good Cooperative (a collective of women working in the arts and sex work) in 2020 in Rome during the COVID-19 pandemic. She is represented by the galleries Ellen De Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam) and ChertLüdde (Berlin).

Inspired by slapstick comedy, Henricks explores the thin line between humour and violence. Quoting the films of Charlie Chaplin, Fassbinder, and Derek Jarman, the video features two dancers who reinterpret a series of short scenes. The work questions traditional masculinity and the power structures that exclude or harm marginalized people.

Nelson Henricks was born in Bow Island, Alberta and graduated from the Alberta College of Art. He moved to Montréal in 1991 and received a BFA from Concordia University. He recently completed a PhD at Université du Québec à Montréal. Henricks has taught art history and studio art at Concordia University, McGill University, UQAM and Université de Montréal. His writings have been published in exhibition catalogues, magazines, and in several anthologies. A curator and artist, Henricks is best known for his videotapes and video installations, which have been exhibited worldwide. A focus on his video work was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the Video Viewpoints series in 2000. Henricks was the recipient of the Bell Canada Award in Video Art in 2002, the Prix Giverny Capital in 2015, and the Prix Louis-Comtois in 2023. An exhibition of his work was presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2023. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and others. He is represented by Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto. For more information, go to www.nelsonhenricks.com.

In a mute city where videos of wildfires go viral, a community commits to a strange slumber. Tired of struggling, a young night worker decides to give in to their call. Through encounters on this other side of reality, he gathers antidotes to despair and keys to revive language. When he wakes up, the world remains unchanged yet everything is different. Blending mysticism and counter-utopia, Swarm explores how imagination holds the power to transform reality.

Camille Orso Caël (fka Camille Picquot) is a filmmaker, photographer and writer. Their artistic work questions normativity. It seeks light and possibilities of emancipation – large and small, practical and poetic – within modernity. It focuses on themes of margins, urban life, resistance and enchantment. Their films and images extract antidotes to oppression out of dreams and visions. Their work has been featured in publications such as Libération, C41 Magazine, De Morgen, Le Monde, l’Art-même, The Atlantic. It has also been exhibited and screened internationally in art centers, galeries and institutions such as WIELS, FoMu Museum of Photography, Brakke Grond, IFFR, Marres Current, Paris Photos, Foto Museum Winthertur.

Early morning. Trains pass by. A man and a woman are lying in bed. She wakes up, gets dressed, and begins to talk. He listens silently.

Elit ??can (b. Istanbul) is an actress and filmmaker based in Hamburg. Since her debut in 2006, she has built a substantial career in acting, an experience she is now integrating into her work as a writer and director. After graduating from Koç University with a degree in Media and Visual Arts, she further developed her craft by earning a Master's degree in Film from HFBK Hamburg. Her filmography as an actress includes acclaimed titles such as My Only Sunshine (Berlinale 2009), the Academy Award-nominated Mustang (Cannes 2015), Sibel (Locarno 2018), and Pillar of Salt (Berlinale 2019). Her recent credits include Kaan Müjdeci's Hamlet, Asl?han Ünald?'s Afloat, and ?lker Çatak's Gelbe Briefe. She is also an alumna of Berlinale Talents and Sarajevo Talents.

Photocopies takes a look at young people in times of mounting uncertainty and crisis through a series of decelerated, non-narrative scenes. Presented entirely in singular one-takes, the work turns toward the private – silence, solitude, the moments in which we feel unobserved – as a way of articulating a shared generational feeling. Each scene depicts young people in intimate and personal everyday moments: a dancer rehearsing alone at night in his studio; a young girl walking home from school, absorbed in a game she is playing by herself; a group of sleeping teenage boys at dawn who have fallen asleep after some party; a hotel clerk, sitting in silence. Time appears to have halted – each moment preserved indefinitely and stripped of its inherent transience. At the same time a subtle and quiet discomfort lingers in every scene: a melancholic uncertainty, as if the installation’s characters are silently waiting for a catastrophe that could erupt at any moment.

Casper von Bülow (*2003) is an artist and filmmaker based between Munich and Berlin. Following a brief career in acting in his late teens, his focus shifted toward his own work as a filmmaker. Currently, he is a student of video artist and filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Photocopies is the first work he has shown publicly since he began his studies. In between his studies, he has worked for artists and filmmakers such as Anne Imhof and Maren Ade.

This documentary weaves together two stories of disappearance: that of Atzin Molina, my high school friend who vanished in 2019, and that of Atzin, the Totonac rain deity, believed lost or dead amid the oil-driven devastation of Veracruz, Mexico. Through these two figures who share a name—one human, the other divine—the film traces a landscape of absence, where grief, ecological violence, and spiritual erosion become inseparable.

Manuel Bayo Gisbert is a Mexican filmmaker, photographer and journalist. His work examines systemic violence in relation to territory, memory and history. After surviving kidnapping and torture in 2020, he began a long-term, multimedia audiovisual exploration of serious human rights violations in Mexico through collaborative and intimate processes; this project, A Solid Home, explores the history of violence in Mexico through still and moving images. His projects have been adapted into articles at The New York Times and have been exhibited internationally, including a solo show at the Rayburn House Office Building of the United States Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C., organized by Amnesty International and the National Security Archive. ECOS, his first exhibition in Mexico, presented his work alongside pieces by fellow artists Graciela Iturbide and Musuk Nolte. He is currently editing his feature-length fiction debut (The Territory) and developing a second fiction film.

St, Mary’s Parish, Jamaica, April 1760, in a cave near what is now known as Tacky Falls, Tacky’s Rebellion is unfolding as the most significant revolt of the eighteenth-century in the Caribbean, three decades before the Haitian Revolution. An unimaginable leap (2026) traverses loosely associated events and places: 16mm footage of daily life in contemporary Jamaica; caves as portals; and a celebration of Jamaican Independence Day at a cricket club in Manchester. Moments of respite and celebration are negotiated alongside the threat of ecological degradation and bauxite mining, in order to consider the relationship between revolutionary time, the climate emergency and cinematic form.

Hope Pearl Strickland is an artist-filmmaker from Manchester, UK, working with experimental and documentary-based modes. Their work wrestles with the choices undertaken when we visualise racialised violence, attempting to ask how we might live in a world and relate to one another with care whilst amongst and against systems of power and control. Films move across archival, 16mm and digital practices. Hope’s work has screened internationally at film festivals including the 59th New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival (2022), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2025) and Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (New Cinema Awards, 2025).