Nicolas Philibert was born in 1951. After studying philosophy, he turned to cinema and became an assistant director, especially to René Allio, Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta. He now lives in Paris. La Maison de la Radio (‘Radio House’) is his latest film, which was discovered at the Berlin Film Festival in February and is now being screened at cinemas throughout French-speaking Switzerland.

HEAD – Genève and its Cinéma/Cinéma du Réel department have taken this opportunity to interview a filmmaker who has produced over twenty films, including Le pays des sourds (‘In the land of the deaf’), Un animal, des animaux (‘Animals and more animals’), La ville Louvre (‘Louvre City’) and Être et avoir (‘To be and to have’), milestones in his deeply committed work over the past thirty-five years. But other films will also be discussed such as La voix de son maître (‘His master’s voice’), an inaugural work, now thirty-five years old, on the filmmaker’s visual listening process; L’Invisible (‘The invisible’), a remarkable encounter with Jean Oury, a psychiatrist at the La Borde clinic where Philibert shot La moindre des choses (‘Every little thing’); Nénette, a silent dialogue with a very dignified old female orangutan; and Retour en Normandie (‘Back to Normandy’), in the footsteps of René Allio’s film Moi Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma sœur, mon frère (‘I, Pierre Rivière, who cut my mother’s, sister’s and brother’s throats’). Finally there are the short films Nicolas Philibert is so fond of making, such as the one he shot for La Faute à Rousseau (‘Blame Rousseau’), a collection of films co-produced by HEAD Geneva to mark the tercentenary of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s birth.