Masterclass Representations of Women in Fantastic Art

We love genre cinema, and we’ll always defend it, but we can’t deny that for a very long time it was, and to a large extent it still is, a man’s world. Generally speaking, there’s a male creator behind the camera and his female muse in front of it. The new wave of directors such as Julia Ducournau and Coralie Fargeat, who are seizing on the codes of genre cinema to do radically new things with them, gives us hope that the status quo is shifting. It also makes us want to delve deeper into the topic in a masterclass on “Representations of Women in Fantastic Art”, which will focus not just on cinema but on all spheres of fantastic art. We’re kicking off the discussion with Emma Benestan, director of uppercut “Animale”, Pauline Marlière, member of the team behind the award-winning video game Caravan SandWitch, ambassador of the “Women in Games” collective and expert on female characters in the gaming world; and other speakers yet to be announced.

MASTERCLASS IN FRENCH.

© Mathieu Zazo

Emma Benestan

Emma Benestan is a French-Algerian director, screenwriter and editor who studied at the editing department at La Fémis. She helped edit BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR and MEKTOUB, MY LOVE, and has directed and written several short and feature films: HAUTS LES COEURS (presented in competition at the Cannes 2021 festival), GOÛT BACON (shortlisted for the César for best short film in 2018) and SOFT SHELL, HARD SHELL, her first feature film. In 2024, her second feature film, ANIMALE, was released after having premiered at the Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival.