Ovidie
Writer, film, maker
October-December 2025
- Cinema
- New York
“This film aims to reveal the life of a complex character who has been too long caricatured. Most importantly, it seeks to rediscover her work seriously, analyze her thoughts credibly, and not dismiss them as the work of a madwoman.”
I am a screenwriter and director of both fiction and documentaries. I also hold a PhD in literature and film studies. My academic research focuses on autofiction on screen. I specialize in feminist topics, and the characters in my films are often extraordinary women who have faced tragic destinies.
I began by exploring the concept of feminist pornography in the late 1990s by producing a series of films for Canal +. I then shifted to documentary filmmaking starting in 2010. I have worked extensively for public broadcasters (ARTE, France Télévisions, France Culture) as an audiovisual and sound documentarian. I was nominated for the Albert Londres Prize in 2018 with the film Everything’s Better than a Hooker, which addressed a Swedish femicide.
I then turned to serial fiction and cinema. Among other projects, I directed two seasons of the series Des Gens Bien Ordinaires, for which I won an International Emmy Award in 2023.
Ovidie is a writer and director of both fiction and documentaries, holding a PhD in Literature and Film Studies, and specializing in feminist issues and autofiction.
She has since directed several highly acclaimed documentaries, including Pornocratie (2017, Canal +), Là où les putains n’existent pas (2018, ARTE – Amnesty International Award for Best Documentary and Albert Londres Selection), andLe Procès du 36 (2022, France 2). She has also created a series of fiction works, including Des gens bien ordinaires (2022, Canal +, International Emmy Award for Best Short Series). In parallel, she writes and directs several radio documentary series for France Culture.
My project is the development of a feature-length documentary about the life and work of the writer Valerie Solanas. She is best known for a notorious incident: on June 3, 1968, she entered the Factory and shot Andy Warhol three times. This is about all that posterity remembers of Solanas—the image of a madwoman who wanted to eradicate men. This film aims to reveal the life of a complex character who has been too long caricatured. Most importantly, it seeks to rediscover her work seriously, analyze her thoughts credibly, and not dismiss them as the work of a madwoman.
The story of Valerie Solanas is primarily New York-based. The event that made her tragically famous—the attack on the Factory and the shooting of Andy Warhol—attests to this. I previously conducted initial research while making a 52-minute film for ARTE on the Scum Manifesto. I am very pleased with this initial work, but obviously, it wasn’t possible to stay long enough to explore all the archives I would have liked to access. Therefore, I will take advantage of this three-month stay in New York to seek out additional archives, finish writing my screenplay, conduct location scouting, meet or reconnect with key figures, and of course, meet American partners.
In partnership with
Magneto