ANAÏS BARBEAU-LAVALETTE
Born in 1979 and named Artiste pour la Paix in 2012, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette has directed several award - winning feature-length documentaries, including LES PETITS PRINCES DES BIDONVILLES (2000), SI J'AVAIS UN CHAPEAU (2006), LES PETITS GÉANTS (2009, winner of a Gémeaux award) and SE SOUVENIR DES CENDRES (2010), which documented the adventure of making Denis Villeneuve’s INCENDIES (LA DONNA CHE CANTA) and won the Gémeaux for best documentary, and LE PLANCHER DES VACHES (2015). She has directed three fictional features: LE RING (2007, official selection at the Toronto and Berlin festivals), INCH'ALLAH (2012, official selection at Toronto and Berlin – Fipresci international critics’ award, Ecumenical Jury Prize) and GODDESS OF THE FIREFLIES. This year, she will film an adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel Chienblanc. She is the author of the travelogue Embrasser Yasser Arafat (2011), the children’s book Noshéroïnes (2018) and the novels Je voudrais qu'on m'efface (2010) and La femme qui fuit (Prix des libraires du Québec, Grand Prix de la ville de Montréal, Prix France-Québec, voted bestseller of the decade, 2010-2020) – a great popular and critical success.

Director's statement
"I will never forget the young bookstore clerk, her eyes filled with certainty and excitement, holding out a copy of La Déesse des mouches à feu, hot off the presses. “Read this. It’s the novel of the year”. That was in 2014. I read it in one sitting, and the next day I called my producer: “I want to turn this novel into a movie”. I wanted to make a film from this novel because it’s the first time I’ve been told the story of my own generation. La Déesse des mouches à feu is a unique teen story. We witness Catherine’s subtle but significant tipping point. Her coming of age, her transition from teen to young woman, told in a tortured, passionate, carnal tale. The novel’s success is a testament to how strongly it resonates. We want to hear about the dark side of our teen years, no matter how painful those years may have been. We like to remember where we came from. From that troubled time, when our emotions are nebulous and unfocused. We like to revisit the first stirrings of love, bodies discovering each other, awkwardly deciphering each other, the desire to please and be accepted, feelings of aimlessness, loneliness, isolation – quintessentially adolescent feelings. There is something beautiful about that age: retold again and again, the story’s very nature sends it straight to the heart every time. The simple act of telling the story of budding humanity in a complicated world inspires empathy, and even nostalgic sympathy. […] Those first halting steps into adulthood will always shake, confront and inspire me".