The Lebanese director Danielle Arbid is the patron of the Institut français Fabrique Cinéma 2021. Danielle Arbid, who was born in Beirut but lives in France today, will use this masterclass to explain her film director’s career path.

She will share her experience with the ten directors selected by the Fabrique Cinéma 2021. Her fiction films – like Parisienne, A Lost Man or In the Battlefields – have been selected by Cannes, Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Locarno, Pusan or Tokyo, and have been shown around the world. Danielle Arbid has also received the Léopard d'Or video at the Locarno festival for the series Conversation de salon (Lounge Conversation) but also the Grand prix of the Milan festival, the Albert Londres Prize and the Europa prize of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs.

Her fourth fiction feature film, Simple Passion, was in the Official Selection at the Cannes film festival last year. It is due to be released in France in August 2021.

Find out more about Danielle Arbid

Wissam Hojeij will give a masterclass on music and film. This Franco-Lebanese composer’s music can be heard in feature films and documentaries. He has composed the music for twenty short films and won the prize for best music at the Kinoma festival in 2017 for Et Toujours nous Marcherons (And Still We Walk On) by Jonathan Millet, for example.

Several of his compositions have also been selected abroad: Headbang Lullaby and Jahilya, by the Moroccan director Hicham Lasri, at the Berlin Film Festival (Panorama Section 2017 / Forum 2018), or Ceniza Negra, by the Costa-Rican director Sofia Quirós Ubeda, in Cannes during Critics’ Week 2019.