Vladimir de Fontenay

After studying political science in France and Italy, Vladimir de Fontenay joined the Master of Directing program at NYU (Tisch School of the Arts) in New York, where he was a Spike Lee Production Fund laureate. His first feature film MOBILE HOMES starring Imogen Poots and Callum Turner was selected at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight in 2017 and won awards at numerous festivals around the world. In 2019 he directs the first three episodes of the Vampires series for Netflix adapted from the book by Thierry Jonquet with Oulaya Amamra, Dylan Robert and Suzanne Clément. In 2022 he completed the biopic Noah for Amazon, which he directed with Delphine Joudeau. Prior to this, in 2015 he directed the medium-length film MEMORIA with Keith Stanfield and James Franco, as well as a number of short films, including WHAT LIES BENEATH THE SKY with Chantal Akerman, selected at the Tribeca Film Festival. Vladimir is currently developing his second feature film SUKKWAN ISLAND, starring Anders Danielsen Lie in the title role. It is adapted from David Vann’s book of the same name (Prix Médicis étranger 2010, Gallmeister).

Vladimir de Fontenay is in residence at the Académie de France in Rome – Villa Médicis as part of the Résidences Médicis program. His residency is devoted to writing his feature film project Acqua in bocca. Synopsis: When Selim, a young illegal immigrant from Morocco working in the construction industry, crosses paths with Colomba, the daughter of a former Corsican nationalist icon, the balance of an entire village begins to shift. Spread over a decade, Acqua in Bocca aims to recount the fate of this young worker, from his arrival on the island in 2013 to his deportation 10 years later, the result of a forbidden love affair that will unleash passions, and precipitate events into a spiral of violence. This love story between a “repatriate” and an “invisible”, set in the small, craggy villages of Corsica, the Italian coast and the majestic heights of the Rif, seeks to take the pulse of a thwarted youth carried along by a magnificent spleen.