Danielle Arbid

Danielle Arbid (born 26 April 1970) is a French filmmaker of Lebanese origin who has been directing films since 1997.

Her work has been selected for numerous film festivals, including Cannes Film Festival, Toronto FF, New York FF, San Francisco, Locarno Festival, Busan and San Sebastián Film Festival. Danielle Arbid's Simple Passion, her fourth feature, was listed in the Cannes official selection, in 2020. Her first two features, Dans les champs de bataille [fr] and Un homme perdu, were screened at the Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Festival in 2004 and in 2007, as well as in around thirty other festivals, picking up numerous awards, including the Directors' Fortnight Prize and the Milan Grand Prize or the Reflet d’Or at Cinéma-tout-écran, Genève.

Her documentaries and other filmed essays have been given an excellent reception and won dozens of awards including the Gold Leopard for Conversations de Salon at the Locarno Festival and the Silver Leopard also at the Locarno Festival for video for Seule avec la Guerre in 2001 and 2004 respectively, as well as the Albert Londres Prize, and the Villa Medici Hors les murs Award for Aux Frontières.

Danielle Arbid is representing Lebanon at the 2022 Edition of the 59th Venice Biennale. - The Lebanese pavilion has been nominated as one of the "Top 15 Pavilions not-to-be-missed" by the Financial Times, Le Monde, the Art Newspaper and the Quotidien de l'Art.

Danielle Arbid left Lebanon at the height of the civil war in 1987, at the age of 17, to study literature at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France. She also studied journalism.

She directed her first short Raddem and the documentary Seule avec la guerre (1999). Having never studied film in school, Arbid says her inspiration comes from "art, photography, people in the street and of course film".[10]

Her first three Conversation de Salon I-III where featured at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria[11] and received the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. Interested in different narrative forms, her work alternates between; fiction, first person documentaries and video essays; with an experimentation of the intersecting of genres. She was one of the founding members of the Lebanese film festival Né à Beyrouth in 2001.[12]

In 2011, Danielle Arbid also directed the Beirut Hotel TV-movie for Arte aired during prime time, becoming one of the channel's most popular fiction broadcasts in 2012.[13]

Her third fiction feature, Parisienne won the Académie Lumière foreign press prize, as well as other awards including the Best Actress prize at Les Arcs in 2016. Parisienne (film) had its world première at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Simple Passion is her fourth feature film. It's an adaptation from the major French writer Annie Ernauxs best-seller book. Simple Passion was selected by the Cannes Film Festival in 2020.[14] It was also selected in the San Sebastián International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Zurich Film Festival, Busan International Film Festival, Les Arcs Film Festival, Lisboa & Cintra Film Festival, and the Lumière Festival. Simple Passion obtained rave reviews from the international press - including The Telegraph,[15] the Guardian,[16] TimeOut,[17] Culture Fix,[18] Sight and Sound,[19] Film Hounds,[20] Film Threat.[21]

Five retrospectives have been held around Danielle Arbid's films at the Gijón International Film Festival in 2007, Bastia Festival in 2007, Paris Cinéma in 2007, the La Rochelle Festival in 2008 and Festival Dei Popoli Florence in 2016.

Her videos were presented at the Centre Pompidou, the Vienna Museum of Art, the MAC VAL, Fondation Boghossian (Belgium), and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes (France).

In 2018, she also directed Le Feu au cœur, a short film for the Paris Opéra.[22]

A documentary about her work titled "Danielle Arbid, un chant de bataille" was produced in 2017 in the prestigious collection "Cinéastes de notre temps" created by André S. Labarthe, former critic of Cahiers du Cinéma.

As an actress, she has worked in few films, including The Apaches [fr] (2013) and Repair the living [fr] (2015).

She is also a art photographer who exhibited at numerous galleries, including the Galerie Cinéma in Paris, Photomed Beirut, and Rouge L'Expo.