Desire featured in Variety

It has been months since I last wrote a blog post. Almost a year actually. I had planned on being way more active on this blog but the constant flow of work on my new films Desire and Scars We Carry never let up and months quickly passed by. Since I last wrote a post, I managed to complete the post-production of Scars We Carry and we just wrapped up the production of Desire, my upcoming film on Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig. I am really happy to share that Variety ran a story on Desire this week. We are now moving on to sound editing, sound mixing and color grading. The film will be ready in a couple of months. And then another adventure will start.

This picture with Carl Craig was taken on the last day of our last shoot in Detroit. We ended up in front of the iconic Michigan Central building, that is one of the symbols of Detroit’s renaissance today. In the past two years, we spent a lot of time trying to capture all the facets of Carl’s beloved Detroit that you can hear in his music: the melancholy, the economic and racial struggles, the resilience, the solidarity, the creativity and the joy. I hope you will be to see, feel and hear all this in Desire.

I am happy to share a few pictures from the shoot. The backstage pictures were taken by the talented Mathilda Schaffter, one of my former students at the Ecole Supérieure du Journalisme (ESJ) in Paris.

This past year, I have also had the privilege to teach the remote master program in documentary filmmaking at the ESJ. My students have produced 17 documentary short films last year, an impressive achievement. I am just amazed by their creativity, resilience and perseverance. And my work with students has become a constant source of inspiration to me.

The tragic story of Alexandre and his family

Last week, I worked on a complicated story about the murder-suicide of the Griffith family in Mapleton, Utah, late last year. This exclusive story raised a lot of questions about what you should reveal as a journalist and what is best kept private. I located the biological father of the alleged murderer, Timothy Griffith, and his ex-wife. The father shared the story of his son and his quest for answers. His son Timothy is accused of shooting and killing his wife Jessica, 16-year-old Samantha, his wife's daughter, and 5 year-old Alexandre, the son he had with Jessica. Timothy is also accused of shooting the family dog before committing suicide.

The Mapleton police department concluded that Jessica planned this murder-suicide with her husband. She thought she was dying from an imaginary cancer and the family's financial situation was dire. The police report was detailed and devastating for both parents, who had fled their financial problems in Switzerland according to people I interviewed for the story. Jessica made several claims to her husband, mother and brother about her childhood, that might help us explain why she was in such distress  in the days leading up to the murder-suicide.  For those who can read French, here is the story that ran last Sunday in Le Matin Dimanche, a major Sunday paper in Switzerland.