Synopsis: Two children get up to go to school. Like every morning, they invent games for themselves, continuing their rituals of cruelty and complicity. But this morning something has changed...

After studying cinema and philosophy in Paris, Katell Quillevéré, together with Sébastien Bailly, created the Brive Rencontres du Moyen-Métrage in 2004. Her first short film, À bras le corps, was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and selected for the 2007 Césars. Her first feature film, Love Like Poison (“Un poison violent") (2010), received the Jean Vigo Award.

Synopsis: Colette, who has to nurse her depressed older sister Brigitte, is bored. During a trip to Paris, she meets Joé. He enters her life, while Brigitte disappears.

Born in 1958, Laurence Ferreira Barbosa was previously an assistant, actor and director of several short films and documentaries. Her first feature film, Normal People Are Nothing Exceptional (“Les gens normaux n'ont rien d'exceptionnel”) (1993), praised by critics, also launched the careers of Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi and Melvil Poupaud.

Synopsis: Ibrahim, a refugee, is hired by a French mutual insurance company which repatriates the bodies of Africans who died in France to their countries of origin. He soon attends his first post-mortem examination in an apartment in the Paris suburbs.

Born in 1970, Danielle Arbid left Lebanon at the age of 17 to settle in Paris. She works as a journalist and covered news about the Arab world before moving into cinema. Since 2000 and her film Alone with War (“Seule avec la guerre), her works have been recognised notably at the Locarno Film Festival and the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes.

Synopsis: Eight teenagers from the north of France are spending a day travelling to look at The Raft of the Medusa at the Louvre. Suddenly, the car breaks down high above the cliffs. They’re stranded on the sandy beach, under the dazed eyes of an exhausted chaperon.

A graduate of the Femis, Delphine Gleize won the César for Best Short Film in 2000 for her film Dirtie Basterdz (“Sale battars”). Les Méduses competed at Cannes as part of Critics Week in 2000.

Synopsis: In a village deserted by its inhabitants, flattened by the summer heat, Joshua wants to commit suicide, as his best friend has already done. Determined to first find a new family for his brother, he meets the strange Icebergs gang, threatening and armed...

Jonathan Vinel studied film editing at La Fémis, and Caroline Poggi studied Creation and audiovisual and cinematographic techniques in Corsica. Together they have made several films, including the short film As long as Shotguns Remain, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear in 2014.

Synopsis: Awa spends her days and nights snacking on nuts. One day she decides to challenge the monster who terrorises the souls around her, in a strange duel.

After graduating from La Fémis in 1992, Barbara Creutz Pachiaudi continued her training at the Film and Television Institute of India. A designer of sets, costumes and staging for cinema and live shows, in 2004 she produced  Awa, her first film.

Synopsis: Djal is sixteen. His dream: to run like his idol, Usain Bolt.

A graduate of the European Conservatory of Audiovisual Writing in 2012, Louis Aubert has worked on more than thirty films and TV movies as a location manager, assistant director, scriptwriter, show runner, consultant and director. He is a member of the Les Indélébiles collective.

Synopsis: Léo, nineteen years old, dreams of just one thing: to gain the coveted position of “stroke” on the "eight", the most technical role on the most prestigious boat in rowing. But he is far from alone in aiming for this spot. To convince the intractable coach, Léo will need to go above during his final training session.

A student at the École de la Cité, Mathieu Mouterde trained in cinematography on eight major productions. He himself was a high-level rower.

Synopsis: Charlotte, who has just joined big sister Nat's football team, prefers to tan during practice. Nat, determined to win, forces Charlotte to change teams. The two sisters are now playing against each other.

A graduate of the Femis, Alice Douard saw her capstone project film, Extrasystole, screened at many festivals. Les Filles continues her exploration of femininity, the search for an identity within a group and romantic relationships.

Synopsis: Between fiction and documentary, this contemplative film follows a group of skateboarding farmers in the remotest reaches of Dordogne.

Influenced by Raymond Depardon and Bruno Dumont, Antoine Besse, a young director of video clips and ads, shot a film intended for the internet, without a producer, in Dordogne with his skater friends. Having racked up 300,000 views on Dailymotion in two weeks, the short film began to tour festivals.

Inspired by the novel Before I burn by Gaute Heivoll, Ashes blends the story of a young man who set fire to homes in a small village in southern Norway with that of the writer who, a generation later, will use the events as literary material. In this work created in 2014, these two tragically ordinary beings, tortured by their inner demons, struggle to slow down their death by self-immolation.

Created in 2008 by Norwegian Yngvild Aspeli, the Plexus Polaire, a cosmopolitan theatre troupe located in Auxerre, designs and distributes human-sized puppets.

Created in 2003 by Camille Boitel, acrobat, dancer, musician juggler and former handbalancer at the Académie Fratellini, The Man of Hus faces a series of rebellious objects which want to prevent him from facing the audience at all costs. This muscular struggle, full of repeated disasters and accidents, transforms the stage into a chaotic battlefield, a cacophony of noises and cries, in the midst of which the Man of Hus struggles to survive.

Camille Boitel founded the company L’Immédiat in 2012. Its speciality: political acrobatic works.

Influenced by Samuel Beckett’s The Lost Ones (“Dépeupleur”), Renaud Hérbin designed Milieu as a closed microcosm in which puppet and puppeteer are trapped without hope of release. The puppet evolves in a constantly changing environment, trying to maintain its constantly-threatened balance. The strings that connect him to man, at once obstacles and the source of his illusory life, generate confusing sensations.

In Tri Fata, the puppeteer in turn embodies the three Fates Nona, Décima and Morta:  the one that gives birth, the one that gives life and the one that kills, thus summarising within the boundaries of the show the entire existence of an old lady living out her final hours.

A company founded in 2003 by Estelle Charlier and Romuald Collinet, La Pendue works with "living theatre, puppets and metamorphoses", sometimes in traditional productions using hand-puppets, and sometimes entering the realm of contemporary creation through numerous techniques (notably marionettes and shadow puppets).

Three solitary neighbours, with their hopelessly ordinary existences, improvise a Grand Guignol show, resulting in disaster after disaster. Gosh! is both a satirical show and a piece of melodramatic theatre.

The company Le fils du grand réseau, based in Brest and directed by Pierre Guillois, claims to produce a "bold popular theatre".

Through their games and arguments, before our eyes pieces of rope are transformed into images from everyday life, holidays and dreams. End to end brings to life ephemeral creatures which emerge and transform into minimalist paintings made from lines drawn by strings.

For 25 years, Marina Montefusco and her company Le Clan des Songes have been developing a theatre of images. Their preferred tools are puppets and animated shapes.

Pinocchio evokes, in four movements, the birth of a child-puppet creature. Created from several series of photographs of children staged as though they were inanimate puppets, produced in France and Mongolia, the performance will be presented for the first time at the Carreau du Temple in Paris on 3rd May 2019, at the opening of the International Puppet Arts Biennial.

The company was created in 2002 by Alice Laloy.

By combining cubes manipulated by hand with video projections, Cubix seeks to reconnect the viewers with their childhood games of construction and deconstruction, to better rediscover their ability to create and dream.

Founded in 1977 by Pierre Blaise, Théâtre sans Toit creates a realistic puppet theatre adapted from the traditional Taiwanese model.

Hullu tells a story of escape and imprisonment in an imaginary world filled with strange, disconcerting little beings with a fantastical spirit.

Blick Théâtre was founded in 2012 as a studio for creating and designing shows which deal notably with monstrosity and the other.

Created in 2016, Brut offers a tale of the physical metamorphosis which characterises adolescence, through testimonials from children and adults.

The Vent des Forges, a claymation theatre, was created in 2005 following an encounter between actor Odile L’hermitte and pottery artist Marie Tuffin.

Born in 1930 in Romania, Ștefan Bertalan is interested in the growth of plants, the evolution of which he follows through drawing, journalling and photography. He is exhibiting his photograms of this artistic transformation. Sunflower is part of the exhibition "La Brique, The Brick, Cărămida" devoted to contemporary Romanian art at the Kunsthalle in Mulhouse. Presented from 14th February to 28th April 2019, the exhibition reveals an active Romanian artistic scene, from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day. The works come from the collection of Ovidiu Șandor, a collector and patron from Timisoara, a twin town of Mulhouse.

Born in 1982 in Romania, Răzvan Boar produces monumental paintings, drawings on paper, along with collages and sculptures, in which drawings turn into fantastical characters, combining sketches and acrylic paint. Study for P. is being presented in Brest, at the Gateway Center for Contemporary Art from 2nd February to 27th April 2019 as part of an exhibition dedicated to the Romanian artist, “The Paintings of Răzvan Boar”.

An ironic reflection on the artist’s investment in today’s world, Artists Talk by Gianina Cărbunariu puts big thoughts and little statements into perspective. The play is being performed at the Théâtre des Célestins in Lyon, from 5th to 7th April 2019, alongside OMG by Ioana Păun. Gianina Cărbunariu and Ioana Păun are two iconic figures of the new contemporary Romanian stage, whose dynamic, sharp writing holds up a mirror to their era.

In If A Tree Were to Fall, two bodies interrogate their ability to articulate emotions independently. What happens when motion capture is rendered precisely in a foreign body? If the technology evolves beyond a simple tool which obeys our commands, can it give rise to new sensations? The performance is presented at the Mirage Festival, an overview of digital cultures taking place from 3rd to 7th April 2019 in Lyon, as part of the “Creative Romania” programme.

The White Team (Satan) by Ioana Nemeșis is being presented at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean in Marseille from April 4th to June 23rd 2019 as part of the “Persona [România]” exhibition. An exhibition that examines ideas of identity through masks, both contemporary and traditional. Eight visual artists from the new contemporary Romanian scene have been invited to enter into dialogue with the MUCEM collections, specifically items with Romanian ethnographic backgrounds, under the curatorship of Diana Marincu.

Long-standing friends – both of whom were trained in the workshop of Gustave Moreau – Matisse and Pallady communicated only in letters from 1940 onwards, when Pallady returned home for an exhibition in Romania and never managed to leave the country again. “A Romanian Season at the Centre Pompidou" presents works produced during this period by the two friends, as well as their letters and photographs revealing Matisse's approach. From 28th November 2018 to 20th May 2019 at Centre Pompidou.

Under the direction of Cristian Mandeal, on 30th November 2018 the Romanian Youth Orchestra played the Romanian Rhapsodia by Enesco, Manfred by Tchaikovsky, and Concerto no. 2 by Saint-Saëns, at the Paris Philharmonic with Fazil Say accompanying on piano. This event thus launched the France-Romania 2019 Season.

Bridging tradition and modernity, Marius Mihalache & Band's Saftita project offers a unique mix of Romanian folklore and the rhythms of the Balkans. A mix of synthesizers and traditional instruments, such as the cimbalom, which refreshes the power of the region's pop music. The concert took place in Ground Control in Paris on 12th December 2018, opening Travel in Transylvania, beyond the forests of Romania ("Voyage en Transylvanie, au-delà des forests de Romania").