Festivals - Gerardmer 2021 : The Short Film Jury

By Mulder, 14 january 2021

Actor Pio Marmaï, president of the jury, actresses Roxane Duran, Chloé Jouannet and Sarah Stern & directors Léo Karmann and Xavier Palud will award the Grand Prix for short films on Sunday, January 31, 2021.

Pio Marmaï (President of the jury)
A theater actor, with 32 feature films to his credit in his young career, Pio Marmaï devours life and experiences. Nominated for a César for Best Male Hope for his role as a rebellious big brother in Rémi Bezançon's Le premier jour du reste de ta vie in 2008 and for his performance in Isabelle Czajka's D'amour et d'eau fraîche in 2009, he has since navigated gracefully and without boundaries between auteur and popular films, comedies, dramas and genre films. As much a lover of American cinema as of Michaël Lonsdale, he embodies a form of freedom and lightness in a world that is often compartmentalized. His career in motion breathes audacity and curiosity, experiments and eclecticism. Actor athletic, physical, authentic, a face where beauty competes with roughness, Pio Marmaï carries within him a natural distance and a taste for communicative play that is the mark of great actors. "He has such freedom. He has this detachment, this involvement and this beauty. He is free" says Pierre Salvadori, with whom he has just shot La petite bande. A freedom to be rediscovered soon and more than ever on our big screens.

Roxane Duran (Actress)
Born in Paris, of a Spanish father and an Austrian mother, Roxane Duran took theater classes from the age of six. After studying at the Ecole Active Bilingual Jeannine-Manuel and obtaining her baccalaureate, she entered the Sorbonne to begin studying literature. In 2008, she entered the Cours Florent and Michael Haneke offered her a role in his feature film Le Ruban blanc, which won the Palme d'or the following year. She then went on to shoot 17 filles by Delphine and Muriel Coulin (2011), Augustine by Alice Winocour (2012), Michael Kohlhaas by Arnaud des Pallières (2013), Respire by Mélanie Laurent (2014), La Famille Bélier by Eric Lartigau (2014) and Evolution by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (2015), winner of the Critics' Prize and the Jury Prize at the 2016 Gérardmer Festival. Roxane Duran takes her first steps in the theater in 2012 in a play written by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt based on "Le Journal d'Anne Frank". She returned to the stage in 2014 for Les Cartes du pouvoir, then in 2019 for L'heureux stratagème, two plays directed by Ladislas Chollat. In 2015, she appeared on television in the series Les Témoins, broadcast on France 2. She then played the recurring role of Adriana Clios, alongside Julia Stiles, in the British series Riviera created by Neil Jordan in 2017. She will soon star in Nicole Garcia's film noir Amants, Nicolas Steil's dramatic comedy L'Enfant caché, Sean Ellis' horror film Eight for Silver, and Anthony Fabian's American film Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, alongside Isabelle Huppert and Lambert Wilson, among others.

Chloé Jouannet (Actress)
Chloé Jouannet took her first steps in film at the age of 12 in the comedy Lucky Luke by James Huth. She was revealed in 2013 for her remarkable performance as a rebellious teenager in Rose Bosch's Avis de mistral, where she shares the bill with Jean Reno. In 2018, she joins the cast of Neil Jordan's international series Riviera with Julia Stiles. She also appeared in François Desagnat's comedy Le Gendre de ma vie, alongside Kad Mérad. The following year, she landed one of the lead roles in the series Infidèle, inspired by the English fiction Doctor Foster. On the strength of its public success, the series is renewed for a second season broadcast in the fall of 2020. The actress also distinguished herself as a young mother in the TV movie Jamais sans toi, Louna, in which she shared the poster with Rod Paradot and Alice Taglioni, and as a brilliant law student in Banlieusards, the first feature film by Kery James and Leïla Sy, broadcast on Netflix. At the end of 2020, she played the heroine of the Derby Girl series, available on France TV Slash, a fallen figure skating star determined to become a roller derby champion. Chloé Jouannet is currently filming the French adaptation of the English hit series Luther for TF1, in which she plays the lead female role.

Léo Karmann (Director & Writer)
First assistant director, assistant scriptwriter and assistant casting for several years for television and cinema, Léo Karmann directs Jumble Up in 2014, a short comedy film written with Pierre Cachia, which is presented in about sixty festivals. He co-founded with Sabrina B. Karine and Nadja Dumouchel La Scénaristerie, an association that defends screenwriters who do not want to realize their own projects. Still with Sabrina B. Karine, he founded A-Motion, a production company specialized in script development. Simon's Last Life, his first feature film as a screenwriter and director, is selected at the Festival de Gérardmer 2020.

Xavier Palud (Director & Writer)
Xavier Palud began as assistant director on the set of the popular comedy Un Indien dans la ville, directed by his father Hervé Palud. Three years later, he directed his first short film, Sexous Breakdown. He then met David Moreau on the comedy series H and began writing and directing their first feature film, Ils (2006). This horror film, inspired by a news story, tells the horror night of a couple attacked by children in their house in Romania. The positive feedback from the film received in Hollywood prompted the two young directors to pursue their careers in the United States. The following year, they signed the remake of a Hong Kong fantasy film directed in 2002 by the Pang brothers, The Eye, in which they directed Jessica Alba and Alessandro Nivola, among others. Xavier Palud also tries his hand at directing episodes of television series such as the American series XIII (2011), the French mini-series Intrusion (2015) and Braquo (2016). In 2012, he directed his first solo feature film, À l'aveugle, a thriller with Jacques Gamblin and Lambert Wilson. He is currently developing two feature film projects and two series projects.

Sarah Stern (Actress)
After training at the Studio Théâtre d'Asnières, Sarah Stern joined the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 2006. That year, she got her first film role in Les Amants du Flore, directed by Ilan Duran Cohen. In 2007, she played in Olivier Baroux's Ce soir je dors chez toi, followed by roles in Safy Nebbou's Comme un homme (2011), Bruno Chiche's Je n'ai n'ai oublié rien (2011), Katia Lewkowicz's Tiens-toi droite (2014), Rebecca Zlotowski's Planetarium (2016) and Russian director Alekseï Outchitel's Matilda (2017). In 2012, she plays Jeanne de Berry in season 2 of the Borgia series, then Zoé Passeron three years later in the science fiction series Trepalium for Arte, directed by Vincent Lannoo. Since 2011, she plays Stéphanie Tuche in the film series Les Tuche by Olivier Baroux.

(Source: press release)