Other directors – Bande à Part Films

Blaise Harrison

Blaise Harrison was born in 1980 and is a French-Swiss filmmaker. He graduated from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL).

Following the completion of Bibeleskaes (29 min), a self-produced documentary shot on Super 16mm and co-directed with Maryam Goormaghtigh, which was selected for Visions du Réel in Nyon, Blaise Harrison worked as a director and cinematographer on the documentary series Cut Up, produced by Quark Productions for ARTE. He subsequently directed Armand, 15 ans l’été, a 50-minute documentary co-produced by Les Films du Poisson and ARTE, which was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes and screened at numerous international festivals, including the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, where it won the Best Documentary Award.

His next film, L’Harmonie (60 min), also co-produced by Les Films du Poisson and ARTE, was selected for the Locarno Film Festival and received a Scam Star, an award that annually recognizes the best of French documentary production. Both films were released on DVD by Potemkine as part of its documentary collection and are regularly featured in special screenings and programmes (Documentary Film Month, Lycéens et apprentis au cinéma, etc.).

In 2017, Blaise Harrison was awarded the Fondation Gan for Cinema grant for his feature fiction project Les Particules, which received the CNC advance on receipts that same year. The film was released in 2019. In 2025, he began developing the documentary Inland, produced by Bande à part Films.

Alongside his work as a director, Blaise Harrison also regularly works as a cinematographer, notably on creative documentaries co-produced by ARTE and on films for theatrical release.

Marie-Eve Hildbrand

Born in 1978 in Lausanne. Graduate of ECAL with honors, she won the prize of the cinema department 2004. In 2008, she won the 5th European Grand Prix of the first films, at the IMAGES’08 festival. She directed the collective film In our campaigns, and obtained in 2017 a special prize from the Swiss Film Academy for casting and directing actors in the film My life as a Zuchini by Claude Barras.

Barbet Schroeder

Following his studies in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Barbet Schroeder wrote film reviews for Cahiers du cinéma before becoming Jean-Luc Godard’s assistant on the set of Les Carabiniers in 1963. The following year, he founded his own production company, Les Films du Losange, and worked with filmmakers such as Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Wim Wenders.

He directed his first feature, More, in 1969, and subsequently turned to documentary filmmaking with General Idi Amin Dada and Koko. His career took off in the United States in 1987 with Barfly, and three years later he was nominated for an Academy Award for Reversal of Fortune. He then directed a series of thrillers, including Single White Female in 1992 and Kiss of Death in 1995. Schroeder subsequently travelled to Colombia to make Our Lady of the Assassins (2000), which received an award at the Venice Film Festival, before returning to more commercial cinema in 2002 with Murder by Numbers. After appearing as an actor in An Adventure and Paris, je t’aime, he returned to Cannes as a director in 2007 with Terror’s Advocate, which was selected for Un Certain Regard. He first collaborated with Bande à part Films in 2017 on The Venerable W.

Ricardo and Painting was released in cinemas in autumn 2023.

In August 2023, Barbet Schroeder received an Honorary Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, followed by a retrospective of his work at the Cinémathèque française in November.

Elena Avdija

Born in 1987 in Prishtina, Kosovo, Elena Avdija grew up in the canton of Jura, Switzerland. She came to filmmaking through sociology, studying at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and later at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris, where she developed a strong interest in field research. She worked in Paris as a documentary assistant director on projects produced by ARTE, France 5 and others. At the same time, she produced and directed her first two short documentaries, gaining her initial experience as a filmmaker. After returning to Switzerland, she continued working as an assistant director in fiction and as a casting coordinator for extras.

She made her feature film debut with Bande à part Films. Cascadeuses received the Perspective d’un doc award at Visions du Réel and RTS in 2019, followed by the Golden Eye at the Zurich Film Festival and the Best Documentary Film Award at the Swiss Film Awards in 2023.

Laetitia Dosch

After studying translation, Laetitia Dosch trained at the Cours Florent in Paris before continuing her studies at La Manufacture in Lausanne. There, she met Marco Berrettini, La Ribot and the 2b company led by François Gremaud, with whom she would go on to collaborate. Her acting career has since spanned both theatre and film.

On screen, she has worked with filmmakers including Justine Triet (Age of Panic, 2013), Christophe Honoré (Sophie’s Misfortunes, 2016) and Léonor Serraille (Jeune Femme, which was presented at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival), among many others. In theatre, she has performed everything from Shakespeare alongside Éric Ruf to Duras with Katie Mitchell, as well as more experimental forms with Yves-Noël Genod.

Her distinctive personality and intense performances are particularly evident in her own creations, including Laetitia fait péter and Un album, inspired by comedian Zouc and created at Arsenic in 2015. She also took part, with a horse, in the Être bête(s) weekend and subsequently created Hate, an attempted duo with a horse, in June 2018. At the end of the first lockdown, in May 2020, she created Les arbres vous parlent at Théâtre de Vidy, followed by Radio arbres, an open-air radio programme for trees, on France Culture.

With Dog on Trial, she stepped behind the camera for the first time. The film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section, where Kodi, the dog playing Cosmos, won the Palm Dog. The film was released in cinemas in September 2024.

Matias Carlier

Born in Paris in 1998, Matias Carlier earned a Bachelor’s degree in Film from ECAL in 2021. His graduation film, La fièvre, the story of a love declaration thwarted by circumstances, was selected for the Berlinale in 2022.

Bande à part Films produced his first feature, Toute ma vie, a documentary released in 2025 that follows a young teenager who becomes passionate about “bike life” while delicately exploring the quest for identity. The film received a Special Mention at Visions du Réel 2025 in the National Competition.

Keerthigan Sivakumar

Keerthigan Sivakumar was born in Sri Lanka in 1988 and moved to Switzerland in 2009.

After earning a degree in visual communication, he trained as a community interpreter (Tamil-French) before joining ECAL, where he graduated in 2021. He has already directed several short films, both fiction (Doosra, 29 min, 2021; Jegan, 15 min, 2019) and documentary (Suis-je aussi un rêve ?, 17 min, 2020). His first feature film, Une terre sableuse, is currently in production with Bande à part Films.

Coline Confort

Son travail est basé sur une approche documentaire, créant des moments intenses de vérité et de mise en scène, toujours à partir d’un travail de recherche approfondi.

Son premier long métrage de fiction Josie s’en va-t-en guerre est actuellement en production chez Bande à part Films.

Coline Confort is a writer and director based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Film from ECAL in 2020. Her graduation film, Impériale, was presented at several festivals, including the Locarno Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, Angers Premiers Plans and the Winterthur International Short Film Festival. It won the Best Swiss School Film Award at the Winterthur International Short Film Festival and was nominated for Best Graduation Film at the 2022 Swiss Film Awards.

Since then, she has directed two short films, 10 Missed Calls and Les Écailles lui sont tombées des yeux, as well as the feature-length documentary La Vie acrobate, released in cinemas in French-speaking Switzerland in 2023. She is a member of the artistic collective Revolta. Her work is rooted in a documentary approach, creating intense moments of truth and staging, always grounded in extensive research.

Her first fiction feature, Josie s’en va-t-en guerre, is currently in production with Bande à part Films.

Elsa Amiel

Born in 1979, Elsa Amiel grew up in theatres. The daughter of mime artist Jean-Pierre Amiel, she spent her childhood travelling around the world on tour.

At the age of 18, she began her career as an assistant to Raoul Ruiz. She later worked with Mathieu Amalric, became a first assistant director, and collaborated with various filmmakers, including Bertrand Bonello, Noémie Lvovsky, Riad Sattouf and Julie Bertucelli.

In 2010, Elsa Amiel stepped behind the camera with her first short film, Faccia d’Angelo, which won an award at the Villeurbanne Film Festival. This was followed by Ailleurs seulement (Angers Film Festival, Cabourg Film Festival) and H24 – Fan Zone. At the same time, she began developing her first feature film, Pearl, which was produced by Bande à part Films and released in 2019.

Her documentary film Dentro premiered at Visions du Réel in 2026.

Elie Grappe

Born in 1994, Elie Grappe received musical training at the Conservatory of Lyon before graduating from ECAL in 2015. His first fiction feature, Olga (2021), won the SACD Award at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2021. In 2022, the film was selected as Switzerland’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Olga received three Quartz awards at the Swiss Film Awards and was distributed in 38 countries.

Elie Grappe is currently developing his next feature film, Chavirer, adapted from a novel by Lola Lafon.