David GUIRAUD
Director, Editor
France
David Guiraud was born in 1984 in the Alpes-Maritimes, where he still lives. In 2008, he co-founded the Cannes-based production company ADASTRA FILMS. As Artistic Director, he oversees and guides the artistic vision of projects, from writing to editing, for the filmmakers the company produces. He has enabled Adastra Films to produce a diverse range of feature films such as LaRoy, a triple award winner at Deauville 2023, The Strange Ones (SXSW) and 4 short films selected at Sundance. David has also directed three short films, including L’Assistante (broadcast on Netflix) and En Proie (France 2). As an editor, he has worked on several short and feature films, including Patardzlebi (Berlinale award). David is an alumnus of Groupe Ouest, G.R.E.C and the Maison du Film’s DUO residency. He is currently developing his first feature film.
Filmography
En Proie
L’Assistante
Le Tonneau des Danaïdes
Shane Atkinson is an American writer-director. He received his MFA in screenwriting and directing from Columbia University in New York. Shane has directed several short films, including Penny Dreadful (Audience Award at Clermont-Ferrand). He also wrote the screenplay for Poms, starring Diane Keaton. In 2023, his first feature film, LaRoy, won the Grand Prix, Audience Award and Critic’s Award at the Deauville American Film Festival, following its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival. The film was released in France in April 2024 (distributor : ARP).
Filmography
LaRoy
L’Ambassador
Penny Dreadful
Shane ATKINSON
Director, Writer
USA
Akaki POPKHADZE
Director, Writer
France, Georgia
Akaki was born in Georgia in 1991. He grew up in Russia until he was 13. In 2004, he moved to Nice. In 2017 he wrote and directed Le soleil des Nuits blanches, his graduation film at L’ESRA. In 2019 Akaki wrote and directed Je Vois, a medium-length film in one 36-minute sequence shot, about the relationship between a man and his grandmother. The film was awarded the “court d’ici” prize at the Nice European Film Festival in 2019 and the “CNC quality” prize in 2020. In 2023, he directed a short film, Ici en silence tout hurle (Piano Sano Films) presented in the 2024 national competition in Clermont-Ferrand, awarded at the Bruxelles ISFF and selected for the Palm Springs Short Fest. The same year, he directed his first feature film, In the Name of Blood (Adastra films), starring Nicolas Duvauchelle, Denis Lavant, Finnegan Oldfield and Florent Hill. The film, supported by the CNC, was distributed in France by ARP Sélection and pre-purchased by Canal +.
Filmography
Brûle le Sang
Ici en silence tout hurle
Je vois
Le soleil des nuits blanches
Born in 1992, Tigrane Minassian is a French screenwriter, director and editor based in Cannes, France. Since 2016, he has been working with Adastra Films as an editor, designing film promos and trailers for international sales companies such as Indie Sales, Loco Films and Urban Sales. Tigrane is also a member of the Jury of the 20th Grasse Film Festival (2018), of the Cannes Pocket Video Festival (2017) and in 2018, he mentors the Vox Milo Festival filmmaking workshop (in partnership with the Director’s Fortnight), which helps underprivileged youths to express themselves through video projects. In 2021, he won the “Plume de Cristal”, first prize of the 48H Screenwriting Marathon at the Valence Screenwriters Festival. His first short film, Out of the Fog (pre-purchased by France Télévisions), starring Léa Drucker and Samuel le Bihan, was selected in over 30 international festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand, Brest, Tirana, Norwich, Nice, Macau… Since 2024, he is part of the Torino Film Lab Extended program where he develops his first feature film.
Filmography
Hors de la Brume
Tigrane MINASSIAN
Director, Writer, Editor
France
Rim LAURENS
Composer
France
Rim Laurens is a French film music composer who has collaborated with some twenty directors from all over the world (Japan, Russia, USA, Poland, Georgia…). The films for which he has composed original music have won over 40 awards and been selected for over 500 international festivals, including the prestigious Berlin, Sundance, Tribeca, Deauville… Most of these films have been broadcast on France Télévisions, Canal +, Netflix, as well as several other international channels.
Based in Helsinki, Aino Suni (born in 1985) is one of the most promising Scandinavian directors of her generation. Her short films Turnaround and Wolf Carver have been selected for prestigious festivals such as Clermont-Ferrand and Sarajevo, and broadcast on Canal+, YLE and the Italian channel RTI. Her first feature-length documentary Never Again, about rapper Mercedes Bentso, had its world premiere in 2018 at Love&Anarchy HIFF, before being released in cinemas in Sweden and Finland. She followed this up with her first feature-length fiction film, Heartbeast, a painful initiation tale with a hip aesthetic, with music by one of the members of the duo Air, Jean-Benoît Dunckel. Released in France in February 2023, the film won two Jüssi Awards (the Finnish Oscar) for Best Music and Best Cinematography.
Filmography
Heartbeast
Never Again
Pussy Diaries
#Thisime
Turnaround
Wolf Carver
Aino Suni
Director
Finland
Vincent DIDEROT
Director
France
Vincent Diderot was born in Toulouse in 1980 and currently lives in Narbonne. After a double degree in Visual Arts and Performing Arts, he directed and self-produced his first short films including Jour 0, which was screened at the Forum des Images in the cycle “Man and Machine”, and broadcast at Utopiales in Nantes. His third short film, “La Révelation”, a parody of a science fiction B movie, broadcast on Canal + and screened in more than 40 international festivals, including Off- Court Trouville and the Méliès Fantasy Film Festival (Lund Fantastic Film Festival, FANTASIA Montreal, Utopiales, etc.). His short film “Maxiplace”, produced by Adastra Films, was supported by the CNC, the Poitou-Charentes Region, SACD-Beaumarchais and PROCIREP-ANGOA. Vincent also directed a transmedia project “Alpha Pill”, that was supported by the Orange / Innovative formats grant and premiered at Cannes Film Festival in NEXT section.
Filmography
Jour 0
La Révélation
Maxiplace
Pilule Alpha
Lauren Wolkstein is a multi-award-winning American filmmaker who received her MFA in Film Directing from Columbia University. She recently directed two episodes of Alice Birch’s mini-series Dead Ringers (the remake of David Cronenberg’s film), as well as the final episode of Nick Antosca’s A Friend of the Family for Peacock. She was also production manager for season 5 of Ava DuVernay’s critically acclaimed Queen Sugar (directing six episodes in total), and directed episodes of Y : The Last Man, Cloak & Dagger and Dare Me. Her first feature, The Strange Ones, starring Alex Pettyfer and James Freedson-Jackson, premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW ’17 and was one of John Waters’ favorite films of the year. She co-directed the film with Christopher Radcliff, based on their Sundance short of the same name. Lauren’s previous short films, including Social Butterfly (Sundance 2013) and Cigarette Candy (SXSW 2010 Grand Prix du Jury), have screened at festivals around the world. Lauren Wolkstein is a MacDowell Institute and Sundance Institute Fellow, and Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Cinema”.
Filmography
Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger
Queen Sugar
The Strange Ones
Collective : Unconscious
Social Butterfly
Deux Inconnus
Cigarette Candy
Lauren WOLKSTEIN
Director
USA
Christopher RADCLIFF
Director
USA
Christopher Radcliff is an American filmmaker based in New York. His first short film “THE STRANGE ONES” (co-directed with Lauren Wolkstein) had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2011. The film has was selected in more than 100 festivals around the world, including SXSW, Rotterdam and Clermont-Ferrand and received more than 20 awards, including several awards that have qualified the film for the Oscars. Christopher is a graduate of Columbia University, where he also received the “Ezra Litwak Award of Distinction” in the script category. In 2012 he was selected to participate in the Berlinale Talent Campus in screenwriting with his feature film project “DUMB” and the following year he was able to participate in the “IFP Emerging Storytellers Program 2013” with the script of his feature film version of “THE STRANGE ONES”.
Filmography
The Strange Ones
Jonathan’s Chest
Deux Inconnus