Simone Bitton

Simone Bitton was born in Morocco in 1955 and divides her time between Paris, Rabat and Jerusalem. She graduated from the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) in 1981. Her oeuvre consists of more than two dozen films and documentary series for cinema and television. Her work is formally diverse - investigative documentaries, archival editing, poetic essay films, first-hand reports and intimate portraits of avant-garde writers, artists and political figures - without shying away from her political commitment to the history, culture and contemporary context of the Middle East and North Africa, a deep personal and professional commitment that her films attest to. The series she directed, Les grandes voix de la Chanson Arabe (1990), and the film Palestine, the history of a land (1993), are reference works that are still being distributed and broadcast in several countries 20 years after their release. Wall (2004) and Rachel (2009) have won several awards, including the Sundance Special Jury Prize and the César Award. Bitton teaches at the Université Paris-VIII-Vincennes-Saint-Denis and is a member of the Ateliers Varan.