Val d’Isère is organizing the 14th edition of the International Adventure & Discovery Film Festival from April 19 to 22, an end-of-season event that is always eagerly awaited and which blows a wind of adventure and freedom into our city nestled in the heart of Alpine mountains. We are going to leave once again for an exceptional world tour.
On the menu this year, 11 films in competition selected from more than 150 documentaries received, 4 screening evenings, 5 exhibitions and two new features: a meeting for the public at the Val d’Isère Municipal Council Hall on April 21 with a member of the jury and a festival-goer and the opening of a third broadcast room at the Congress Center in order to accommodate ever-increasing numbers of spectators.
All the ingredients are there to make this new edition a must-see for all lovers of grandiose landscapes, unique encounters and extraordinary personalities. Set off for these distant lands and escape.
Welcome to Val d’Isère, let the Adventure begin!
Sylvain Tesson
Sylvain Tesson, member of the Society of French Explorers. A geographer by training, he divides his life between long-distance travel and writing. Its preferred regions correspond to the heart of immense Eurasia: Afghanistan, Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet. He publishes reports in the magazine press and has written around fifteen works including: Small treatise on the immensity of the world (Equators), Praise of wandering energy (Equators), News from the East (Phébus), the Axis of the Wolf (Robert Laffont).
His latest collection of short stories “A Life to Sleep Outside”, published by Gallimard in 2009, won the Goncourt short story prize and the Grand Prix de short story prize from the Académie française. Recently he published with Gallimard an account of the engagement and combat of Alpine hunters in Afghanistan: “High tension” (Gallimard).
He is the author of documentaries devoted to discovery and adventure broadcast on France 3, Voyage and France 5.
Samuel le Bihan
Samuel le Bihan began his career with classical training: Rue Blanche school, Paris Conservatory and Actor’s Studio in New York, then he joined the Comédie Française. He will defend the texts of Corneille, Racine, Hugo, Kleist, Feydeau and many others…
It was also at this time that the cinema discovered him thanks to directors like Régis Wargnier, Bertrand Tavernier, Alain Corneau… He then left the Comédie Française but returned to the theater by playing Stanley Kovalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” alongside Caroline Cellier, which earned her a nomination for Molières in the “Young hopeful” category. In the cinema he is Norbert, the officer in “Captain Conan” for which he was nominated for a Césars, then came “Vénus Beauté” by Tonie Marshall for which he won the Jean Gabin Prize, “Pacte des Loups” and “Jet Set” which definitively consecrate him in the eyes of the general public. After flirting with American Cinema and actors like Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and Andie Mac Dowell, he moved behind the camera by directing a short film “ALPHONSE FUNEBRE”, then a documentary “Nomad’s Land” broadcast in Envoyé Spécial on France 2.
He created his own production house with the desire to support young artists such as François Xavier Demaison, of whom he is also one of the authors.
Alternating genres, Samuel Le Bihan moves happily from “Disco” by Fabien Oteniente to “Public Enemy Number One” by Jean-François Richet and more recently on the stages of the Théâtre Montparnasse in the play “Parole et Cure” by Christopher Hampton .
He was President of the Jury of the Jules Verne Aventures festival in 2006. Samuel is also a director of Action Contre la Faim for which he has just produced a documentary after the earthquake in Haiti, which will soon be broadcast on M6.
Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson has always placed people at the heart of his photographic approach. For the past ten years, he has devoted his life and energy to the Arctic. First of all, as an ultra-specialized logistician, organizing numerous extreme expeditions, most of the time world firsts. Then he takes up his aircraft again to bear witness to the unique life led by the Russian polar aviation teams and, more broadly, the populations of the Russian Arctic. The first stage of a long work around the Arctic, the “Arctic Sentinels” mission led him, in 2008, to explore a large part of the Russian Arctic.
In 2010, Nicolas Mingasson created the Arctic Photographic Observatory, a unique and original structure which will allow photographic documentation of the Arctic in a lasting manner with the aim of archiving and documenting the upheavals underway in these sentinel regions.
Laurent Guillaume
Laurent Guillaume
After studying communications, and four years spent in the editorial office of Télé Lyon Métropole as a journalist reporter, Laurent Guillaume joined France 3 Rhône-Alpes in 1993 where he created several discovery magazines.
In 1998, faithful to his passion for the mountains and those who experience them, he launched the first issue of Chroniques d’en Haut, a magazine entirely devoted to the discovery of the mountain world, in the massifs of France and the world. During these thirteen years at the head of this magazine – of which he is also the presenter – he has produced numerous documentaries in France and abroad. His broadcasts listen to the mountain people he meets at home, in the field.
Laurent Guillaume was born in Lyon in 1967, and divides his time between the Capital of Gaul where he lives when he is not filming, and his little “refuge” lost in the Maurienne mountains.
Chroniques d’en Haut is now broadcast in 20 of the 24 regions of France 3, on France 3 Sat, and TV5 Monde. The show celebrated its 400th issue last year.
Christian Trommsdorff
Christian Trommsdorff
In 1997, Christian Trommsdorff put an end to thirteen years of adventure in high technologies. The scientist chooses to live in the open air, in the high mountains. He becomes a guide, and a strong Himalayan.
At 45, this man born in France and of German origin today wants to serve French mountain authorities, initiate discussions and promote amateur mountaineering. He is President of the High Mountain Group and also Vice-President of the SNGM (National Union of Mountain Guides). Christian is passionate about traveling around the world.
He has more than 30 expeditions to his credit, including several achievements in pure alpine style at the top international level (Everest, Makalu, Chomolonzo, Pumari Chhish, Nemjung). He co-founded the “Solidarité Alpes-Cachemire” association which helps victims of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan.
Photographer - Michel Denis
Michel Denis drops anchor at the Henri Oreiller Convention Center, the canvases unloaded, the sketchbooks ready to be unpacked and thumbed through.
The sheets of Vergé, Rives and Nepalese paper hanging on the walls tell of his distant travels or at the end of the garden.
Photographer - Laurent Ballesta
“Whether we immerse ourselves in the blue waters of Corsica or the green waters of Canada, in the lagoons of Polynesia, or under the ice floes of the North Pole, everything remains to be discovered…
The ocean, even today, is barely better known than Mars or Saturn. »
Photographer - Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson has dedicated his life and energy to the Arctic. From January 2008 to September 2008, well beyond the Arctic Circle, he produced a series of portraits of symbolic characters sharing the life of the northernmost populations
Photographer - Marie-Noëlle Bermond
Photography without artifice, only film, in natural light and without filters. Exceptional light, unreal colors and unique places.
Photographer - Rric Brossier, France Pinczon du sel
Five years for the Ice Pack. From 2004 to 2009, Vagabond welcomed scientists from Damoclès. This European program studies the future of the Arctic sea ice, whose role is essential in the evolution of the global climate.
Photographer - Michel Denis
Michel Denis drops anchor at the Henri Oreiller Convention Center, the canvases unloaded, the sketchbooks ready to be unpacked and thumbed through.
The sheets of Vergé, Rives and Nepalese paper hanging on the walls tell of his distant travels or at the end of the garden.
Photographer - Laurent Ballesta
“Whether we immerse ourselves in the blue waters of Corsica or the green waters of Canada, in the lagoons of Polynesia, or under the ice floes of the North Pole, everything remains to be discovered…
The ocean, even today, is barely better known than Mars or Saturn. »
Photographer - Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson has dedicated his life and energy to the Arctic. From January 2008 to September 2008, well beyond the Arctic Circle, he produced a series of portraits of symbolic characters sharing the life of the northernmost populations
Photographer - Marie-Noëlle Bermond
Photography without artifice, only film, in natural light and without filters. Exceptional light, unreal colors and unique places.
Photographer - Rric Brossier, France Pinczon du sel
Five years for the Ice Pack. From 2004 to 2009, Vagabond welcomed scientists from Damoclès. This European program studies the future of the Arctic sea ice, whose role is essential in the evolution of the global climate.
Photographer - Michel Denis
Michel Denis drops anchor at the Henri Oreiller Convention Center, the canvases unloaded, the sketchbooks ready to be unpacked and thumbed through.
The sheets of Vergé, Rives and Nepalese paper hanging on the walls tell of his distant travels or at the end of the garden.
Photographer - Laurent Ballesta
“Whether we immerse ourselves in the blue waters of Corsica or the green waters of Canada, in the lagoons of Polynesia, or under the ice floes of the North Pole, everything remains to be discovered…
The ocean, even today, is barely better known than Mars or Saturn. »
Photographer - Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson has dedicated his life and energy to the Arctic. From January 2008 to September 2008, well beyond the Arctic Circle, he produced a series of portraits of symbolic characters sharing the life of the northernmost populations
Photographer - Marie-Noëlle Bermond
Photography without artifice, only film, in natural light and without filters. Exceptional light, unreal colors and unique places.
Photographer - Rric Brossier, France Pinczon du sel
Five years for the Ice Pack. From 2004 to 2009, Vagabond welcomed scientists from Damoclès. This European program studies the future of the Arctic sea ice, whose role is essential in the evolution of the global climate.
Photographer - Michel Denis
Michel Denis drops anchor at the Henri Oreiller Convention Center, the canvases unloaded, the sketchbooks ready to be unpacked and thumbed through.
The sheets of Vergé, Rives and Nepalese paper hanging on the walls tell of his distant travels or at the end of the garden.
Photographer - Laurent Ballesta
“Whether we immerse ourselves in the blue waters of Corsica or the green waters of Canada, in the lagoons of Polynesia, or under the ice floes of the North Pole, everything remains to be discovered…
The ocean, even today, is barely better known than Mars or Saturn. »
Photographer - Nicolas Mingasson
Nicolas Mingasson has dedicated his life and energy to the Arctic. From January 2008 to September 2008, well beyond the Arctic Circle, he produced a series of portraits of symbolic characters sharing the life of the northernmost populations
Photographer - Marie-Noëlle Bermond
Photography without artifice, only film, in natural light and without filters. Exceptional light, unreal colors and unique places.
Photographer - Rric Brossier, France Pinczon du sel
Five years for the Ice Pack. From 2004 to 2009, Vagabond welcomed scientists from Damoclès. This European program studies the future of the Arctic sea ice, whose role is essential in the evolution of the global climate.
