The 6th edition of LabDoc welcomes in 2025 a new group of documentary filmmakers from across the Mediterranean region. Under the artistic direction of Adriano Valerio, participants will be guided by Shu Aiello, Giulia Achilli, and Rebecca Houzal during two residency sessions, held in Marseille from April 14 to 18 and from September 8 to 12, 2025.
Since the beginning of the genocide, I have felt a deep need to return to Palestine, to support my parents and my people in this overwhelming moment. It seems vital to me to document my deeply artistic roots, especially as war targets culture to erase our identity and control the narrative. I decided to film the daily life of the Ashtar Theater in Ramallah, founded by my parents in the 90s, a cultural center that shaped my personality and my art. Following my parents into their theater, I capture their silent struggles and acts of resilience that reveal both the weight of the occupation and their unwavering strength and dedication to art as a tool of resistance.
The world is a continuous choreography; dancing is not only on stage, but also behind the scenes. Three stories dance in balance between success and scars, with chaos within them to create dancing stars.
A Spanish woman travels to Uruguay in search of an absent father whom she last saw 12 years ago. At the age of 6, a cassette tape that her mother listened to constantly and a vivid imagination led her to believe that her father was Erik Satie. Now that she is 36, this fantasy has been revived after the unexpected result of a DNA test: 29% of her genetic heritage is French. To clear up this confusion, she undertakes to meet his father at a notary and legally recognize him as his father. But first, she has to find him.
A meeting of octogenarian brothers and sisters, gathered around a board game invented by their father, to reflect on the migratory journey of a family who fled the Armenian genocide.
During the 1970s and 80s, an autonomous, libertarian movement stirred up disorder in Toulouse. Heirs of May ’68, of the anti-Franco struggle and of Situationism, they targeted work, prisons, computer surveillance, and the spread of nuclear power. Now grandpas and grandmas with highly respectable appearances, forty years after their exploits, they recount to us their explosive years.
When I turned thirty, I felt it was time for me to become a mother. However, I faced a few obstacles: I was single, without a stable job, my parental role model gave me the creeps and my fertility was beginning an irreversible decline. For five years, I filmed all the steps that led me to motherhood and today I am sending an audiovisual story to my future child to depict the beginnings of his conception.
Giulia Achilli is an Italian film producer. After studying in Milan, she moved to India, where she produced the feature film Barah Aana, released on 140 screens across the country, and the documentary Inshallah, Football, which received a Special Jury Mention at the Dubai International Film Festival and won an Indian National Film Award. In 2013, she joined Dugong Films, a Rome-based production company dedicated to developing auteur-driven projects that explore contemporary realities through original and innovative perspectives. Under her leadership, the company’s films have been selected at major international festivals—including Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Locarno, and Rotterdam—and have been showcased in renowned art institutions such as Tate Modern, MoMA, Art Basel, and the ICA. Dugong Films has been awarded the Eurimages Lab Project Award three times, recognizing its commitment to cinematic experimentation and new forms of storytelling. In 2023, Giulia was nominated—together with her co-producers—for Best Producer at the David di Donatello Awards for Disco Boy by Giacomo Abbruzzese, which won the Silver Bear for Best Artistic Contribution at the Berlinale.
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.
Rebecca Houzel co-founded the production company Petit à Petit at the end of 2006. It produces mainly documentaries, selected and awarded at numerous festivals in France and abroad, a significant proportion of which are destined for theatrical release. She supports both young and established filmmakers. At the heart of her production choices is the need she perceives among filmmakers for films that change the way they look at the issues and territories they explore. It has developed an international network, particularly to produce Eastern European auteurs, and is beginning to develop feature-length fiction films.
