journalist, writer

Born in the Pas-de-Calais region of France, a lawyer by training, with a degree in public law and a former student at the Lille School of Journalism, he started at Europe 1 in 1979 before joining public television as a top reporter and news anchor. In 1998 he succeeded Laure Adler as head of France 2's cultural magazine Le Cercle de minuit. In 1999 he became the producer and host of the programme Des mots de minuit, which he has been presenting ever since, with nearly 500 issues to his credit. He directs the cultural magazine desmotsdeminuit.fr on France Télévisions.

Vice-president of Afhar-Tcl (Association France Handicap Rare - Troubles Complexes du Langage).

author, director, actress

Mother writer, great-grandfather an academician, father a clown and circus director, grandmother administrator of the Renaud-Barrault company, my childhood was spent with sets, books, stage sets, theatre rehearsals, texts and music, originality, imagination and classicism.

I joined the school of the rue blanche, the ENSATT in 1985 and two years later, I obtained my BTS diploma and was hired to play in Schiller's Don Carlos at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris and at the Cloister of the Carmelites in Avignon.

In 1988, I wrote my first feature film script for the cinema: La Veillée (The Van Gogh Passion), directed by Samy Pavel with Jean-Pierre Lorit, Irène Jacob, and Mathieu Amalric. I also play the role of one of Vincent Van Gogh's sisters.

In 1999 I directed my first production of a Doll's House, from Ibsen in Cyprus (Paphos) where I also play the role of Nora. From 2000 I play both for cinema and television in many films and TV movies: La vie moderne directed by Laurence Ferreira Barbosa (cinema), La place de l'autre by Roberto Garzielli (Arte), Ma Caméra et moi by Christophe Loizillion with Julie Gayet. At the same time, I became a songwriter, took part in Francis Cabrel's Rencontres d'Astaffort and opened for Vincent Delerm with five selected texts. I win a SACEM prize for the song L'inspiration.

In October 2006, creation of the Annaël Company.

I also write about fifty songs with composers such as: Daniel Mille, David Hallyday, Enzo-Enzo, Jean-Max Rivière, Rolland Romanelli, Frédéric Norel, Raphael Bancou, François Bréant, Frédéric Fresson, Alain Goldstein, Edouard Ferlet, Emmanuel Binet...

In 2015, I decided to start writing about Niki de Saint Phalle following the exhibition at the Grand Palais dedicated to the artist. I give a short version of the show as part of the Festival of short plays at the Théâtre Berthelot in Montreuil. In 2016, we begin an artistic collaboration with Marcelo Zitelli, an Argentinean and active member of the Niki de Saint Phalle Foundation who was also his personal collaborator for some fifteen years.

In conjunction with the Théâtre Plateau 31, the Annaël company obtains a residency grant from the DRAC Île-de-France for a first twelve-day work at the Théâtre de Gentilly, following which we give three performances that lead to the pre-purchase of the show at the Théâtre du Ranelagh. On March 12, 2017 we have a full house with the show at the Théâtre du Ranelagh (300 seats) as part of the Encounters with Schizophrenia. In April 2018, the company decides to perform at the Avignon Festival supported by the Niki de Saint Phalle Foundation. The show was a great success with the public and following the festival, a tour is organized in 2019 all over France. A film script about Niki de Saint Phalle is currently being written.

author, director

Maxime Potherat is an author and director. In 2007, he wrote and directed two series of short programs: La vie des animaux selon les hommes broadcast on France 5, prize for the best short program at the Festival de la Fiction TV de la Rochelle in 2008, and La p'tite couronne broadcast on MCM, prize for the best web fiction at the Festival de la Fiction TV de la Rochelle in 2008.

He created, wrote and directed between 2012 and 2015 the web series: On habite au 65, jury prize at the Webprogram Festival de la Rochelle in 2013 and winner of the SACD/Youtube 2013 competition. In 2013, he wrote and directed Les Derniers Hommes, a 25-minute short film produced by Les Films d'Avalon, winner of the “Coup de Coeur” prize at the Hyères festival in 2014.

In 2015, he created, wrote and directed Vestiaires Libérés, a web version of the programme Vestiaires broadcast on France 2, which received the jury prize at the Webprogram Festival of Paris in 2015.

Since 2015, Maxime has been one of the directors of the short programme and 52-minute episodes of En Famille broadcast on M6. In 2017, Maxime co-directs with Jules Thénier, the digital series Les Engagés, 10 episodes of 10 minutes for France Télévisions, which won the prize for the best digital series at the La Rochelle Festival in 2017. In 2019, he directed: Vertige, a 4 x 10 minutes produced by Golden Moustache for Pickle TV.

actress, screenwriter and director

Anne Le Ny entered the Conservatory and made her theatre debut. She performed on stage for about ten years, before starting a career in cinema. On the big screen, she has appeared in numerous films including Ma Petite entreprise, Le Goût des autres, Se souvenir des belles choses, La Petite Lili, La guerre est déclarée, La Brindille, Intouchables, Suzanne, Je fais le mort, La Confession, Le Secret des banquises…

On television, she played many supporting roles in series or TV movies that made her a familiar face to the public, and gradually moved on to writing and directing.

In 2007, she went behind the camera for the first time to direct her first feature film, Ceux qui restent, which she also wrote the screenplay for, along with Vincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos, nominated for a César for Best Debut Film. She will then direct Les Invités de mon père, Cornouaille, On a failli être amies and La Monnaie de leur pièce in 2018.

writer, screenwriter

Joël Houssin is a French science fiction and thriller writer. He is also known under the pen name of David Rome and, in collaboration with other writers, signs under the collective pseudonyms of Sacha Ali Airelle and Zeb Chillicothe.

He began by writing science fiction, which earned him the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in 1986 for Les Vautours, the Prix Apollo in 1990 for Argentine and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in 1992 for Le temps du twist.

Apart from science fiction, he is notably responsible for the series of Dobermann crime novels - the first title being The American Dobermann published in 1981 - which director Jan Kounen brought to the screens in 1997.

From the beginning of the 1990s, Joël Houssin moved away from novels in favour of screenplays, mainly for series destined for the TF1 channel such as Les Bœuf-Carottes, Commissaire Moulin or Navarro. He created the series David Nolande for France 2. We also owe him the scripts for Ma vie est un enfer and Dobermann.

composers

Angélique and Jean-Claude, free and agentless symphonic composers. The only couple of composers in France to write under the same signature for forty years in all the major fields of original music: opera, theatre, ballet, cinema, television, fashion shows, advertising, etc.

“The fact of being two allows us to get through the crises that agitate composers - you need PAT (Psychology, Love and Talent) to practice this art in spite of all the difficulties it entails”.

They write stage music for prestigious venues (Comédie Française, Bouffes Parisiens, Théâtre de la Colline, Théâtre de la Criée) with directors such as Gildas Bourdet (Dialogues des Carmélites, Les Fausses Confidences, etc) Gérard Vergez (LLe Visiteur et Golden Joe by Éric Emmanuel Schmitt - 3 molières) Patrice Leconte (Orniffle) Ginette Garcin (Le Clan des veuves).

Angélique and Jean-Claude Nachon signed more than two hundred musics for cinema and television, in particular for Patrice Leconte (Tango, Les Grands Ducs) Claude Lelouch (Robert et Robert) Laurent Bénégui (Au petit Marguery), Sergio Castellito (Libero Burro) Pierre Boutron (a dozen films including Le Silence de la mer - Best Film Music Award - St Tropez Film Festival) Yves Boisset (a score of films including L’Affaire Seznec, L’Affaire Dreyfus, Le Pantalon, L’Affaire Salengro - FIPA Gold Award for Best Film Music)

Symphonists, they also compose for the repertoire of personal works often performed.

Angélique Nachon is the author and writes all the texts of songs commissioned for the theatre and films (Lagrima blu, success of Une Famille formidable, Traiciòn and Tassouma Mosso from the film Tango, Canto di Sorenza from the films Dans un grand vent de fleurs, etc.).

actor

Permanent jury member/ Pascal Duquenne Special Prize

Belgian actor Pascal Duquenne was born on August 8, 1970 in Vilvorde. He has Down syndrome and is famous for having played the role of a young man afflicted with that same disability in the film Le Huitième Jour by Jaco Van Dormael, for which he was awarded the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor and the Joseph-Plateau Prize of the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent in 1996. In 2004, Albert II of Belgium named him Commander of the Order of the Crown.

writer, director

Patrick Segal has been an avid sportsman since he was a young man, playing track and field, skiing, rugby and martial arts. He is a black belt in karate. A high-level sportsman, an accident deprived him of the use of his legs in 1972, when he was only twenty-four years old.

But this accident doesn't break his momentum. Indeed, he goes around the world in a wheelchair, which he recounts in a book L'Homme qui Marchait dans sa Tête (The Man Who Walked in His Head), which wins the Prix des Maisons de la Presse. In 1976, he crossed the Atlantic on Father Jaouen's sailboat and worked as a photographer at the Montreal Olympic Games and the Toronto Paralympic Games. His pictures were exhibited at the FNAC and the Pompidou Museum. He ends up joining the France Handisport team and participates in two European championships, a world championship and the Paralympic Games in Seoul.

In 1980, he shot his first feature film La nuit ensoleillée (The Sunny Night), selected at Cannes and at the Oscars in 1981, then for France 2 a documentary, Où es-tu camarade ?, on the condition of disabled people deported to the gulags in the USSR. In 1989, he was deputy mayor of Paris, in charge of the handicapped, then inter-ministerial delegate for the handicapped between 1995 and 2002.

He has dedicated himself to the defence of disabled people through his works (books, films) and humanitarian (for Médecins Sans Frontières or Handicap International of which he was vice-president) or political actions. In 2008, he was Inspector General of Social Affairs; during his government missions, he worked with Gilbert Montagné on a mission concerning the integration of blind and visually impaired people.

journalist, author, producer

It is her passion for gastronomy that led her to work for television producer Guy Job for 10 years. First as a TV presenter for the TV show Bon Appétit Bien Sûr, then as a journalist for Gourmet Tv and Canal Plus, and finally as the author of several documentaries and entertainments on cooking and chefs for the public service.

Since 2014, she has been a culinary consultant for Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) and also a producer. Disability is a subject that particularly affects her since she has been going to Lourdes for more than 15 years as part of a pilgrimage to accompany people with disabilities.

director

Jules Thénier has been a cinephile since his early years, working in the video store run by his father. It is there that his sensitivity to different cinemas became more refined. After laborious studies in the classical curriculum, the possibility of a film school became obvious to him.

After this training, he directed his first short films with the team of Kamera Sutra, an association that promotes collective creation. After 4 short films that made him go through comedy, intimist, social and thriller, he seized the opportunity to direct Vestiaires Libérés, a series created by Maxime Potherat. Then he co-directed with the same Maxime Potherat, the first season of the series Les Engagés (created by Sullivan Le Postec), and more recently Paillasson (series created by Constance Labbé). At the same time, he develops several film and series projects, always to explore different universes...

writer, journalist

After studying journalism, she began her career in the written press at the Sud-Ouest daily newspaper. The young journalist, who is now a Parisian, worked for the Journal du Dimanche for the “society” pages, then freelance for several publications: Elle, Monde-Dimanche and Généraliste.

Passionate about words, she diversifies her writing supports and writes stories for children (Les sorcières du Boisjoli), short stories (for the magazine Nouvelles Nouvelles) and songs, notably for the singer Diane Tell.

On the private side, Maryse married the cartoonist Georges Wolinski in 1971, whom she had met three years earlier in the corridors of the Journal du Dimanche. Georges Wolinski, who lost his wife in a car accident in 1966, was then raising his two daughters. Together, Maryse and Georges Wolinksi have one daughter, Elsa. The couple sometimes have the opportunity to continue their dialogue through books, so when George Wolinksi publishes Lettre ouverte à ma femme (Open Letter to My Wife), the latter replies a few years later with Lettre ouverte aux hommes qui n'ont toujours rien compris aux femmes (Open Letter to Men Who Still Don't Understand Women).

In 1989, she published her first novel, Au diable Vauvert, which was immediately well received. At the beginning of the 1990s, the journalist gave way to the writer, and Maryse Wolinski devoted herself to her second novel, Le maître d'amour (1992). But it was with her third novel, La Femme qui aimait les hommes (1998), that she achieved fame and became a bestseller. Couple life is at the heart of her feminist works; in 2002, she published a story, Chambre à part, and then speaks directly to her husband in Georges, si tu savais... in 2011. In the meantime, she published La mère qui voulait être femme (2008), which deals with family relationships between three generations of women and the roles imposed on women by the social order. All her novels are peopled with heroines (La Sibylline, 2010, La passion d'Edith S., 2014).

On 7 January 2015, George Wolinski died in an attack at the headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris. “They killed Georges, but they killed neither his ideas, nor his values, nor the love of the couple Georges and Maryse. Forty-seven years of love life shattered.” In September 2015, Georges Wolinski's first play, Je ne veux pas mourir idiot, was successfully staged at the Théâtre Déjazet, in Paris, awaiting a tour in France. The text of the play was published with a preface by Maryse Wolinski. In 2016, she publishes Chérie, je vais à Charlie, at Editions du Seuil.

founder and director of Handirect magazine

A native of Haute-Savoie, Jean-Marc Maillet-Contoz became paraplegic at the age of 8 after an accident. He spent 12 years in various rehabilitation establishments, while at the same time attending regular schooling. In these institutions, he had the opportunity to do a lot of sports, particularly athletics, basketball, bodybuilding... After his studies, he started working in various companies without finding his place. It was a time when disability was still not very present in companies and was generally badly perceived. Very independent, entrepreneurship imposed itself on him.

In September 1997, he founded Handirect magazine to inform and inspire people with disabilities. Today it is a disability expert media present in the form of a paper magazine, a website and social networks. Whether in its paper or digital form, Handirect promotes, among other things, initiatives by people living with a disability, the actions of associations that are too small or misunderstood to be relayed in the ordinary media, and deals with the fundamentals of citizenship and equal opportunities. But it is employment and training that largely crystallise the columns of this media.

Since the creation of the magazine, he has been the editor of many articles and interviews, but he also acts as a conference moderator, co-organizer of trade fairs and partner of the biggest events related to disability. He is also a director of LADAPT, the Ecole Santé Sociale Sud-Est and the CRIAS CREAI du Rhône. One of Handirect's maxims to remember: “Difference is one of the best levers for taking advantage”.

doctor, co-founder of Handicap International

Doctor by training, Jean-Baptiste Richardier launched the foundation of Handicap International with his friend and colleague Dr. Claude Simonnot in 1982. As they were outraged by the fate of thousands of Cambodian refugees that were amputated due to the explosion of anti-personnel landmines, the two doctors decided to rally by building prostheses for the victims.

For over 30 years, Jean-Baptiste Richardier spread the action of Handicap International worldwide. He notably highly contributed to the commitment of the organisation against anti-personnel landmines, a battle for which the NGO received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997.

Successively holding the position of communication and development manager as well as landmines department manager before becoming the director general of Handicap International in 2003, he went into retirement in 2016 but keeps a role on the board of directors.

Nicolas Vannier is a French cinema and television producer. Alain and Danielle Vannier have been directing the Orly Films company since 1962. A company dedicated to producing, distributing and internationally selling films directed by the best foreign and French screenwriters, from Claude Miller to François Truffaut, Claude Berri, Alain Corneau, Roman Polanski, Wong Kar Wai, Bertrand Blier, Claude Sautet... The eclectism of the catalogue is due to their curiosity and their appetite for encounters and friendship, which enabled Orly Films to be associated with films like “The little thief”, “Indochine” or “In the mood for love”... Lately, Nicolas Vannier has developed genre films such as “Le pharmacien de garde” by Jean Veber, or “Le ciel, les oiseaux et... ta mère !”, Djamel Bensalah’s first film starring Jamel Debbouze. These days he’s working on international television projects with “Ratcatcher” (USA) and “Crystal Clear Content” (UK).

founder and director of Sao Paulo International Sort Film Festival

Producer and Creative director of the Tela Digital Video Festival, a competitive event for Brazilian shorts, integrating Internet and TV. She is also Chairman and producer of Superfilmes, an active film company since 1983. Working with independent Brazilian filmmakers produced shorts, feature films, documentaries and TV Series awarded in Brazil and abroad. Among them, Obra by Gregório Graziosi, Alice’s House by Chico Teixeira and the TV series O Povo Brasileiro (Brazilian People).