NOUVELLE BUG

Andrea Gatopoulos is an Italian and Greek director, producer and distributor. Member of EFA, Berlinale Talents, Locarno Spring Academy and TFL, he studied in workshops with W. Herzog, Radu Jude and A. Weerasethakul. His films deal with virtual realities, uncanny valleys, anti-capitalism and critiques of progressivism. “Happy New Year, Jim” (2022) was the first machinima in Cannes, at the 54. Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. In 2023 he presented in Locarno “Eschaton Ad”, a film about the apocalyptic advent of AI. Later that year he presented “A stranger quest” (2023), his first documentary feature about maps at Torino Film Festival. In 2024 his short film “The Eggregores’ Theory” opened the 39. Venice Film Critics’ Week as the first AI film in Venice and was nominated for EFA by ZINEBI.

Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice spans film production, video installations, performances, and publications, employing these varied mediums as avenues for epistemological inquiry. Her work delves into new forms of subjectivity shaped by computational capitalism. Her film La Mécanique des fluides (2022) is the first of a trilogy of films proposing a reflection on the processes of individuation in its articulation with algorithms and digital flows of data and capital. It won the César for the Best Documentary Short in 2024. It is followed by the short “Here I am  sitting in a Tin Can” which had its World premiere at Berlinale – Forum Expanded in February 2024.

Total Refusal is a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games. We upcycle video games in order to reveal the political apparatus beyond the glossy and hyperreal textures of this media. Their films have been selected in many festivals including Berlinale and Locarno and their artistic research has been featured worldwide in museums and art fairs. With “Hardly Working”, which premiered in Locarno, they won the European Film Award for Best Short  Film.

Ismaël is a filmmaker and artist who trained at Le Fresnoy and whose student films were screened in many festivals. A graduate of INSAS, LUCA School of Arts, and Le Fresnoy, He exhibits his work in major institutions, like Centre Pompidou in Paris, Pearl Art Museum in Shanghai and in the most prestigious festivals, from Venice Biennale to Cannes, Annecy, IDFA. Since 2022, Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis has been an associate artist at Centquatre-Paris. With Maalbeek, selected for the 59th edition of La Semaine de la Critique, he went further in his investigation of how identity, technology and the virtual world interact, by piecing together the images and sounds of the fragmented, traumatic memory of a victim of the 2015 Brussels terrorist attacks. He won the César 2022 for best Short Documentary.