Valentin Noujaïm — Director | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Valentin Noujaïm is a French-Lebanese filmmaker and artist based between Paris and Athens. A graduate of La Fémis (FR) and former guest student at the Städelschule (DE), he works across film, installation, sculpture, and research-driven narrative forms, investigating how individuals and communities survive spiritual, political, and architectural collapse. Working across 16mm, Super 8, archival material, digital footage, CCTV systems, and experimental visual effects, Noujaïm constructs hybrid cinematic worlds where myth, memory, and urban legend merge. A central axis of his practice examines the architectures that shape contemporary life — business districts, industrial ruins, financial towers, ports, bunkers, and suburban infrastructures — approached as psychic territories haunted by violence, desire, and the ghosts of modernity. He is the author of the La Défense Trilogy. The first chapter, Pacific Club (2022), premiered at CPH:DOX (DK), where it received a Special Mention, and was shortlisted for the 2024 César Awards. The second film, To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion (2024), had its world premiere in the Tiger Shorts Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), and was later screened at the Centre Pompidou (FR) as part of La Cinémathèque idéale des banlieues du monde, curated by Alice Diop. The final chapter, Demons to Diamonds (2025), premiered at the Museum of Modern Art MoMA (US). His films and installations have been presented at the National Gallery of Art (US), Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, ICA London, Kunsthalle Basel, Momenta Biennale de l'image, the Nimes Triennale, and the Istanbul Biennial, as well as in festivals including Visions du Réel, DocLisboa, BAFICI, DokuFest, BlackStar Film Festival, and Festival International du Film Indépendant de Bordeaux (FR). In 2025, his large-scale solo exhibition Panthéon was held at Kunsthalle Basel, accompanied by the monograph Interzone (Kunsthalle Basel & Mousse Publishing). Noujaïm is currently developing his first feature film, The Last Angel of Beirut.