OPTIMISM

Born in France in 1974, Jean-Gabriel Périot has made some twenty short films (montage, fiction, animation), developing a distinctive editing style often built on archive footage. His work recurrently questions violence and history. Short films such as “Even If She Had Been a Criminal…” (2006), “200,000 Phantoms” (2007) and “The Devil” (2012) have been selected and awarded at numerous international festivals.

In 2015, his first feature film, “A German Youth”, about the early years of the Red Army Faction, opened the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival and went on to be selected and awarded at around a hundred festivals worldwide. It was followed by “Summer Lights” (2016), his first fiction film, shot in Japan around the memory of Hiroshima and premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival, and “Our Defeats” (2019), presented in the Berlinale Forum, where it received the CICAE Art Cinema Award.

“Returning to Reims [Fragments]” (2021), based on Didier Eribon’s book and narrated by Adèle Haenel, premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and won the César Award for Best Documentary in 2023. He then directed “Facing Darkness” (2023), about the siege of Sarajevo, selected at Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo and IDFA among others, and “A Life, A Manifesto” (2026), a portrait of filmmaker and revolutionary activist Michèle Firk, presented at the Cannes Film Festival.