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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.

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