The jury and the guests

A true French icon (by way of Uruguay, where she was born), Elli Medeiros made her first appearance in our galaxy in 1976 with the Stinky Toys, a band she cofounded with her partner at the time, Jacno. It was one of the rare cases of French punk. Elli will be spotted on the street by Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols manager, who invited her on the spot at the first punk festival in London, where the Stinky Toys got to share the stage with Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Buzzcocks, The Clash… using the instruments of the latter. In Paris, the band became a symbol of the hip and underground nights. After the break-up of their band, Elli and Jacno became a duo and a landmark of the 1980s with their melancholic techno-pop music (Main dans la Main, L’Âge atomique and the soundtrack of Eric Rohmer’s Full Moon in Paris, in which Elli Medeiros has a small part). She started her solo career in 1985: she wrote songs (the catchy Toi Mon Toit, the album E.M. produced by Etienne Daho in 2006), designed clothes, wrote comic books and acted under the direction of Philippe Garrel, Tonie Marshall, Olivier Assayas, Marion Laine, Gael Morel, Jean-Henri Roger or Pablo Trapero. She acted in the latter’s Leonera, screened in Cannes in 2008, and for which she would win several acting awards in Argentina. A punk rocker and an actress, she is also the ideal president of the jury for this new edition of the fifib.

After graduating from the production department of the Femis Film School, Mikhaël Hers made several acclaimed short films: Charell (2006) and Primrose Hill (2007) were screened at the Critics’s Week, while his medium-length film Montparnasse was selected at the Directors’s Fortnight and won the 2009 Jean Vigo Prize. After a first feature in 2010, Memory Lane, he directed This Summer Feeling, Grand Prize of the fifib last year. He made the teaser of our fifth edition.

Roxane Mesquida's first role was in Manuel Pradal’s Marie from the Bay of Angels. In 2000, she met Catherine Breillat, a turning point in her career. They made three films together : Fat Girl, Sex is comedy and The Last Mistress. She’s been involved in several projects between France and the United States since, working with Gregg Araki (Kaboom), Quentin Dupieux (Rubber, Reality), Xan Cassavetes (Kiss of the Damned), and Phillippe Grandrieux (Despite the Night). In 2013, she co-produced Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves and founded her own production company, 80 minus 2. She’s been producing shorts, including her directorial debut, Baby. She’s working on Sarah Marx’s next film, Heureux qui comme Ulysse.

Jonathan Nossiter is an American writer and director. He started as an assistant stage director on British plays, before becoming an assistant director on Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne). That’s where he met Quentin Crisp, who acted in his first film, Resident Alien (1990). His second feature, Sunday, won the Sundance Grand Prize in 1997. In 2000, he collaborated with Charlotte Rampling on Signs and Wonders, screened at the Berlin Film Festival. They worked together again in 2010 for the film Rio Sex Comedy. A skilled sommelier, he directed Mondovino, one of the only four documentaries in official selection Cannes Film Festival.

Oxmo Puccino started his career within the group Time Bomb, held as one of the most promising new French rap crew in the late 1990s. He released his first album in 1998, Opéra Puccino, and collaborated on the soundtrack of Jacques Doillon’s Little Brothers. After L'amour est mort, his third record Cactus de Sibérie is especially successful. In 2006, he signed with the famous jazz label Blue Note and made a concept-album in collaboration with The Jazzbastards, titled Lipopette Bar. He won two Victoires de la Musique in 2010 and 2012, for his albums L'Arme de Paix and Roi Sans Carrosse. In 2014, he started Au pays d’Alice, a new project with the acclaimed trumpet player Ibrahim Maalouf, based upon Lewis Carroll. His eighth record, La Voie lactée, was released in 2015.

Alex Masson first worked as a film critic in the early 1990s: he had found out it was an easier way to see whatever he wanted rather than sneaking in. Over the years, he’s been working with over twenty French medias (Radio Nova, Les Inrockuptibles, Standard, Première, Cinemateaser…) and collaborates occasionally or frequently for several film festivals (Cannes Critics’ Week, San Sebastian, Amiens, Biarritz, Belfort).

After graduating from the Beaux-Arts of Rouen and Le Fresnoy Film School, Benoît Forgeard directed the short film La course nue in 2006. The following year, he made Belle-Îleen-Mer and Antivirus which have been edited together as a feature, Réussir sa vie. His second feature, Gaz de France, was part of the ACID selection at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Furthermore, he writes and directs the Ben & Bertie Show, a musical TV show he hosts, together with Bertrand Burgalat, on Paris Première.

 Fabrizio Mosca has been producing theatrical films since 1998, amongst which The Hundred Steps directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, which received many awards worldwide, including ten David Donatello Awards in Italy. It was with his company, Acaba Produzioni, that he produced several movies, like Into Paradiso (2010), A quiet life (2010) and Alì Blue Eyes in 2012. He also produced Salvo, directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza, which won the Grand Prix and the Prix Révélation at the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes in 2013. After being creative producer in Fiore (2016), he is now finishing the post production of Ugly Nasty People.

An Conservatoire Supérieur de la Ville de Paris graduate, Dounia Sichov started her acting career in Memory Lane (2010) directed by Mikhaël Hers, a filmmaker she worked again with in 2015 for This Summer Feeling. She also collaborated with Denis Côté (Boris without Béatrice), Abel Ferrara (Pasolini), Eva Pervolovici (Marussia). Dounia Sichov also works as an editor and has recently collaborated with the French photographer Antoine d’Agata on his film Atlas.

A literature and political science student, Céline Tran became the icon of Penthouse France, before becoming a porn actress under the alias Katsuni. Her international career extended beyond the adult film world. She acted in Gaspar Noe’s short film We Fuck Alone, in music videos directed by Miguel Bose or Deborah Anderson and works with the visual artist Prune Nourry, for which she participated in a performance during the 2013 Venice Biennale. She was one of the voices of the series and the animation film Lascars, and writes for Les Inrocks, Huffington Post and Le Plus Nouvel Obs. Céline Tran is now a comic book writer and an actress.

Luna Picoli-Truffaut is graduated from the Beaux-Arts of Paris. She is an artist, an actress and a singer and was recently seen on the features Rosalie Blum directed by Julien Rappeneau and Deux Rémi, deux directed by Pierre Léon. She is the muse of the fifth edition of the festival.