Zoël AESCHBACHER
Film director

Zoël received a grant to help him write his next short film.

What is your artistic background ?
My starting point is the democratization of the Internet, which marks the moment when everything became accessible on the web. I then started to be passionate about music. During my teens, I composed music in my room with a computer and a basic synthesizer. Through the clips available on platforms such as YouTube or Dailymotion, my passion for imagery grew. My goal at the time was simple: to combine these two arts. I grew up in Switzerland, where cinema tickets are expensive. So the internet was a way for me to educate myself. After high school I decided to enroll at an art school in Lausanne, where they have a film department. I finished my training with my graduation film, BONOBO. With this film I won the 2018 "Audience Award" at the Clermont-Ferrand film festival, as well as an Oscar for "Best Student Film". In the meantime, I spent two years assisting a commercial and music video director, finally moving to Paris in 2018. In 2021, I returned to film with a second short in co-production between France and Switzerland. In 2023 that film has won the "Special Jury Prize" at the Clermont-Ferrand festival. Currently I am developing my first feature film.

How do you view your profession today ?
It is difficult for me to have a consistent view of my profession today. I feel that the profession and the very way of making films are changing. Currently films are increasingly made for platforms, replacing, in my opinion, the authentic experience of the cinema. With new technology, film professionals are thinking differently about the form of cinema. How can we give back the sense of experience when everyone is used to discovering films at home on their computer or on their television? I see cinema above all as entertainment, a great spectacle, but it also seems important to me to bring a more profound dimension, in which it is possible to continually question the state of humans, their behavior and their neuroses. It is very difficult to defend this position, especially when you are dependent on the current platforms and studios that seek to create mass content. I try to merge these two desires, but also to make this demanding cinema accessible and without excluding the audience which is, in a way, our best friend. Because before being a filmmaker, I am neither more nor less than a spectator. I try to adapt myself as well as possible to the perpetual changes of the cinema.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
Firstly, I hope to be able to live fully from my art. And secondly, I hope to be able, by then, to perfect and shape my cinematographic identity. That with time, I can find or at least deepen my cinematographic style, so that it resembles me as much as possible. I also hope to be able to collaborate with several countries in co-production and make my cinema international.

Interview conducted in 2022
Photography credit: Morgane Delfosse