The third edition of Lab Doc, Meditalents' documentary writing residency, took place in Marseille in 3 sessions of 5 days spread between June and December 2022.
- The 1st session took place from June 27 to July 1, 2022
- The 2nd session took place from September 19 to 23, 2022
- The 3rd session took place from December 12 to 16, 2022.
The sponsor of the third edition of Lab Doc was Philippe Pujol, journalist and writer, author and director of documentary films.
It's a noble ambition to make a documentary, this cinema of reality. But you can't scrutinize reality without accepting a few rules.
Reality is cold, devoid of morality or symbolism, completely devoid of conscience and indifferent to our representations. The real is icy, indestructible. We can only collide with it and perceive it for a moment, a little disturbed, before watching it slip away as we come to our senses. Reality lets itself be glimpsed in its transience. Grief, for example, is the shockwave of a dreaded disappearance. Awareness of the magnitude of the inescapable is lacking. Stupefaction, on the other hand, is the immediate aftermath of a terrible reality, such as a terrorist attack, which is itself intended to reveal other realities. In the same way, disappointment, pain, fear, horror and sadness are the result of collisions with reality, just as joy, euphoria and satisfaction are the vibrations of an encounter with reality.
Telling the story of reality requires a great deal of preparation. You can't cross the battlefield of reality in complete objectivity, with your little moleskin notebook or digital camera in hand.
Lab Doc's Mediterranean encounters offer this necessary moment for reflection and exchange, not only on how to conceive a documentary, but above all on the indispensable need for an author to express an honest subjectivity, the only way to grasp the fleeting nature of reality.
A group of skaters, including Hanota from Tangier and Rachid from Temara, travel across Morocco to film a Skate video to send to international specialized media. Accompanied by Youssef, the author/director and skateboarder himself, and Youness, filmer and friend of the characters, this road movie confronts the evolution of skateboarding in Morocco with its future perspectives, while painting a portrait of Moroccan youth and their identity difficulties, between unemployment and disillusionment.
Hana, my older sister, lives alone in Algiers. Our paths separated in 2016, when I chose to immigrate to Paris. Between guards at the hospital and techno evenings in the suburbs of her city, Hana takes a path that is socially forbidden to her, that of the night. I decide to take my camera and return home, in order to document the daily struggles of my sister, a young contemporary woman in post-hirak Algeria. This film is also the story of a complicated reconciliation between two sisters that Algeria gave birth to, and that Algeria separated.
I discovered at the age of 48 after several sudden attacks that I suffered from epilepsy. It is due to a dysfunction of my hippocampus, responsible inside our brains for selecting, shaping and encoding our memories. This is a great invitation to take stock of a life spent keeping traces to participate in the construction of a collective memory, and to question the meaning and challenges of this commitment.
Weapons, ballot boxes or the street. Georges, Joumana, Perla. Three intersecting destinies, three generations and the same desire to change a sick country: Lebanon. As crises inexorably follow one another, they find themselves faced with a dilemma: save the world or save their own skin?
Ibrahim YAGANOV, a horse breeder and influential clan leader in the Russian North Caucasus, was forced into exile in Poland because of his political ideas. Separated from his family and his horses, he oscillates between an excessive warlike ambition and the fantasy of his return.
Every year, the week before All Saints' Day, the cemetery of a small village in La Mancha (Casas Ibanez, Spain) is the site of a most interesting spectacle. All week long, the women of the village are busy there, equipped with brooms, cloths and mops to prepare the tombs for the big All Saints' Day visits. They are all ages, all styles: old, young, melancholic and dashing, laughing people, with them, the cemetery is filled with colorful aprons, words, stories, memories and encounters. At the back of the cemetery, a woman is watering yellow daisies which are planted on an empty apartment plot. Next to it, a small plaque reads: “In memory of the 23 men shot in this place on the 25th, 1939, to defend democracy and freedom.”
A cheerful group of disabled activists are about to be judged. In 2018, they occupied SNCF tracks and airport runways in Toulouse to denounce non-compliance with accessibility laws. The trial was never filmed, it is reconstructed with scathing humor by those who hoped and still hope to see their right to dignity recognized. Will justice hear their fight?
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.
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.
