Valentin Noujaïm

Born in France in 1991 to Lebanese and Egyptian parents, Valentin Noujaïm joined the Fémis in 2016, in the screenplay department from which he graduated in July 2020. He directed a documentary – Avant d’oublier Heliopolis and an experimental film – l’Etoile Bleue (shown at Vision du Réel, Doclisboa, Saatchi Gallery, etc.). His first short fiction film, Les Filles Destinées, was supported by the CNC and the Normandy region. He then developed his first feature film, La Nuit des Reines, produced by Kometa films.

In 2002, he was in residence at Artagon in Marseille where he developed a video and an installation entitled Pacific Club. His research work revolves around three axes: anti-racist struggles, spatial utopia and traumatised bodies. His work is permeated by the question of disappearance as a political tool, questioning the relationships of power and domination at work in French society, through the prism of a strong ideal: revolutionary love or the love of revolution.

Between 2022 and 2023, he will also carry out residencies at the Ateliers Médicis in Paris and Guest Student at the Städelschule in Frankfurt.

Project at the Villa Medici:

A story of a failed utopia, a monstrous and anarchistic utopia destroyed, an Orient on fire, a Roman Empire collapsing. Heliogabalus is born in a cradle of blood and semen in 203 AD in Homs, Syria, in a kingdom conquered by Rome where meteorites are gods. The black stone from the sky predicts that he will become Emperor of the Romans and change the face of the world.

But Heliogabalus, the devil in his body, does not simply wish to govern, he wishes for anarchy, anarchy of bodies and forms, anarchy of the Empire. The life of Heliogabalus is an infinite source of inspiration. Heliogabalus is a gigantic black hole around which revolve a multitude of characters, blood, desire for power and revolutions. But his life is as complex as it is incomplete. It leaves much to personal interpretation. Like Fellini in Satyricon, who has fun imagining the missing parts of Petronius’ text, I fantasise a part of his story. The life of Heliogabalus is a play, you have to be able to free yourself from the truth. It is a life that speaks of anarchism, of destroying the old world, of bringing down the Empires. From this story, I want to make a video that speaks of forgotten monsters, of this violence that Heliogabalus inspires, of this desire for apocalypse. Because Heliogabalus, assassinated in Rome, has been erased from history. During my residency at Villa Medici, I want to look for traces of the Syrian Emperor’s passage through the city, whether in museums and libraries, or on these archaeological traces. This research will feed my work and continue my dream portrait of Heliogabalus, a self-effacing emperor and bloodthirsty revolutionary who resonates terribly with today.