LabDoc 2022

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.

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.

An alumnus of the École Louis-Lumière ("Cinéma" class of 1985), Antoine Héberlé began his career directing music videos, notably for La Mano Negra and Les VRP1. In 2013, he was awarded the Prix de la CST-Prix Lumières for a cinematographer for the quality of his work on Hiam Abbas' Héritaged and Stéphane Brizé's Quelques heures de printemps2. He was also awarded the Prix Vulcain de l'artiste technicien at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival for his work on Mahamat Saleh Haroun's Grigris.

After studying art history at the Ecole du Louvre, Sébastien Lifshitz turned to cinema, directing his first feature film, Presque Rien, in 2000. This was followed by the documentary La Traversée (2001), selected at the Directors' Fortnight, then Wild Side (2004) and Bambi (2016), both selected and awarded at the Berlin Film Festival. After Les Invisibles (2012), officially selected at the Cannes Film Festival, and Les Vies de Thérèse (2017) at the Directors' Fortnight, he directed two documentaries: Adolescentes, winner of the Prix Louis-Delluc for Best Film and 3 César awards in 2021, and Petite Fille, presented at the Berlin Film Festival and distributed worldwide. A photography enthusiast, Sébastien Lifshitz also curated the exhibitions Mauvais Genre (2016) at the Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles and L'Inventaire Infini (2019) at the Centre Pompidou.

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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.