Philippe Faucon
Born 1958, Oujda (Morocco). He studied at the University of Aix-en-Provence in France. In 1989 he directed his first theatrical feature film, L’AMOUR. Afterwards he made the theatrical feature films SAMIA (2000), THE BEATRAYAL (LA TRAHISON, 2005), DANS LA VIE (2008), LA DÉSINTÉGRATION (2012), the TV movies SABINE (1992), MURIEL’S PARENTS HAVE HAD IT UP TO HERE (MURIEL FAIT LE DÉSESPOIR DE SES PARENTS, 1995), BEING SEVENTEEN (MES DIX-SEPT ANS, 1996), THE STRANGERS (LES ÉTRANGERS, 1999), GRÉGOIRE PEUT MIEUX FAIRE (2001), and the TV series D’AMOUR ET DE REVOLTES (2008). FATIMA was screened at the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival 2015.

Director’s statement
“My grand-parents didn’t speak French, and neither did my mother when she was a child. They were ‘the invisible ones’ in the society they lived in. Some of Fatima’s manners remind me of them. She is like those women, only partly schooled, who had to emigrate out of vital necessity, to come and live in a country whose language and codes were completely unknown to them. In France, they gave birth to children and raised them, even though sometimes they were kept apart by the language or by different customs and points of reference. For all these reasons, regardless of the things they didn’t know or master, these women have developed major resources, drawn from fierce courage and obstinacy”.