- Maria Schneider, 1983 (2022)
- A Woman, A Part (2016)
- Damage Report (2014)
- Shulie: Film and Stills (2011)
- Lost Tribes and Promised Lands (2010)
- The Mixed Up Files of Ms. Francesca Woodman (2010)
- Sweet Ruin (2008)
- The Caretakers (2006)
- Well, Well, Well (2002)
- The Fancy (2000)
- Shulie (1997)
- Swallow (1995)
Manal Issa is an award-winning French-Lebanese actress. In 2006, while studying industrial engineering in Angers, she was spotted by director Danielle Arbid for the main part in Peur de Rien for which she won the best actress award at the Festival des Arcs. Next, Bertrand Bonello chose her for Nocturama, which screened in many international festivals, including Toronto and San Sebastian. In 2017, living between Paris and Beirut, Issa made 5 films: The Bra by Veit Helmer, Ulysse et Mona by Sébastien Betbeder, Deux Fils by Félix Moati, Une Jeunesse Dorée by Eva Ionesco, and My Favorite Fabric by Gaya Jiji, selected for Un Certain Regard, Cannes 2018. In 2019, she starred in Memory Box by Khalil Joreige and Joana Hadjithomas. In 2020, she played the lead in Ely Dhager's The Sea Ahead, premiering at the Director's Fortnight, Cannes, and starred in Follia by Charles Guérin Surville. In 2021, she co-starred with her sister in the globally acclaimed Netflix film The Swimmers, by Sally El Hosaini, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. Also in 2021, she played the lead in The Anger by Maria Surae. In 2022 she starred in Black Box, directed by Asli Özge. Now based in Beirut, she is shooting several films and completing her own screenplay.
The public discovered Aïssa Maïga in Russian Dolls, directed by Cédric Klapisch. Her next role as a singer in Bamako, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, earned her a César nomination for Best Newcomer. She is equally recognized as a comedic actress in French comedies which have earned her international acclaim and a large Netflix audience. Building on her international appeal, she has been chosen for lead dramatic roles such as The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, by Nigerian-English actor and director Chiwetel Ejiofor. Aïssa Maïga stepped behind the camera in 2018, co-directing with Isabelle Simeoni the Canal Plus television hit Regard Noir, a documentary roadmovie. The film deals with the place Black women hold in fiction and the possible solutions for inclusion of all talents. Marcher sur l'eau (Above Water), Aïssa Maïga's first feature-length documentary, examines the issue of drought due to global warming in Western Africa. Marcher sur l'eau was chosen as an official selection at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, in the category of "Cinema for Climate," and won numerous awards in several film festivals. Her fiction début, Noh Feminist, is a short film that premiered at the 2022 Cannes International Film Festival.
Director, actress, writer, producer, and editor Isabel Sandoval is a Filipina filmmaker who made history with Lingua Franca at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival, which was nominated for the 2021 Film Independent John Cassavetes Spirit Award. Isabel was the 21st commission of the acclaimed short-film series Miu Miu Women's Tales with her short, Shangri-La, which was directed, acted, written, and edited by Sandoval. Sandoval has most recently directed the penultimate episode of the Emmy-nominated FX limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven, based on the book by Jon Krakauer. Sandoval made her directorial debut with the noir-inflected Señorita, which world-premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival and earned her the Emerging Director Award at the Asian American International Film Festival. Her second feature as director was the Ferdinand Marcos-era nun drama Apparition, which won the Lotus Audience Award at the Deauville Asian Film Festival following its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival.
Actress Maria Schneider (1952–2011) embodied the woman actor of her times (smart, eroticized, objectified), but she was also an out bisexual, a feminist, and an astute, prescient critic of the film world she inhabited and resisted. An untrained French actress who left home at fifteen and was mentored by Brigitte Bardot, at 20 she became a global sensation in Bernardo Bertolucci's sexually explicit 1972 film Last Tango in Paris, which she later said was a deeply traumatic experience. Nevertheless, she continued to star in films throughout the 1970s and 1980s, working with celebrated European directors such as Michelangelo Antonioni, René Clement, Nouchka Van Brakel, Phillipe Garrel, and Jacques Rivette. However, the impact of Tango cost her greatly, both emotionally and professionally. She turned down many roles, refusing to be objectified by the camera. In the 1970s, Schneider struggled with drugs, alcohol and suicide attempts, before pulling her life together again in the 1980s with the help of her life partner, Maria Pia Crapanzano. Schneider continued to work steadily throughout her life before passing away at 58 after a long battle with cancer. She was instrumental in assisting elderly French actors without resources and advocating for better roles for older actresses. In 2010, soon before she died, Schneider was awarded the French medal of Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, for her contributions to the arts. She is survived by Crapanzano, with whom she lived for 31 years.
French production company, 5 à 7 Films, was founded in 2015 by Martin Bertier and Helen Olive who share a passion for inspiring auteur-driven films, varied in their content and form that explore humanity in all its forms. They are known for defending ground-breaking and challenging works that blur the boundaries between cinema, documentary and art. They foster both emerging and established talent with powerful, unique and diverse voices. Their films have been selected and awarded in the world’s top festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Locarno and New York, released in cinemas around the world, and broadcast on TV and streaming platforms.
