NOUVELLE BUG

Andrea Gatopoulos is a film producer and director based in Rome, Italy. He graduated in Modern Literature at Sapienza in Rome with a thesis on Virtual Reality and Entertainment. His research in the virtual environment started in 2017 with the photographic project Bit-Reality and culminated in 2022 with the short film “Happy New Year, Jim”, presented at the 54. Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes. His productions were featured in more than 100 festivals in the world including Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, Rome, Camerimage and many others.

Ismaël is a filmmaker and artist who trained at Le Fresnoy and whose student films were screened in many festivals. With Maalbeek, selected for the 59th edition of La Semaine de la Critique, he went further in his investigation of how identity, technology and the virtual world interact, by piecing together the images and sounds of the fragmented, traumatic memory of a victim of the 2015 Brussels terrorist attacks. He won the César 2022 for best Short Documentary.

Total Refusal is a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games. We upcycle video games in order to reveal the political apparatus beyond the glossy and hyperreal textures of this media. Their films have been selected in many festivals including Berlinale and Locarno and their artistic research has been featured worldwide in museums and art fairs.