The Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) is happy to announce that the guest of honour and President of the International Jury for our 22nd edition (30 June – 8 July) will be none other than Josiane Balasko. Actor, director, screenwriter, but also author, she will partake in the New Worlds of Fantasy, literary forum in collaboration with Vertigo, the cultural journal from RTS La Première. A rare opportunity for the audience to discover another facet of this leading figure of French cinema.
A FASCINATION FOR SCIENCE FICTION
Josiane Balasko has enjoyed a lengthy career. Many of her works have attained cult status within many genres, from dramas to comedies, on stage as well as on film, as both an actor and a director. In the 70s and 80s, while part of the legendary Splendid troupe, she most notably co-wrote and starred in LES BRONZÉS FONT DU SKI (1979) and LE PÈRE NOËL EST UNE ORDURE (1982). As a writer and director, she would make eight movies from 1985 on, among which MA VIE EST UN ENFER (1991), a searing supernatural comedy that laid bare her love of the genre, and GAZON MAUDIT (1995), for which she earned the César award for best script.
In 2019, following the publication of the novels CLIENTE (2004) and PARANO EXPRESS (2006), Josiane Balasko paid a full-blown homage to fantasy with the release of JAMAIPLU, a collection of eight short stories inspired by the masters of the genre she discovered as a teenager, from Edgar Allan Poe to Fredric Brown and Ray Bradbury. From telepathic communication with animals, to children’s attraction to happy ghosts and gentle, loving zombies, Josiane Balasko gently and playfully builds a world so often considered frightening.
As our guest of honour and President of the International Jury, she will give a conference about her literary oeuvre and her love for genre stories as part of the New Worlds of Fantasy forum. This event will be moderated by Anne Laure Gannac from RTS Vertigo, and will take place on Thursday, July 6th. A book signing session will follow.
Bookings for the conference will open on June 15th on NIFFF.CH.
