Award: Best Acting Award for French actress Marie Alexandre – 5th edition of the Kobani International Film Festival 2024 (Taha Karimi Edition)

Film Synopsis:

What begins as a simple attempt to reconnect with a distant parent gradually transforms into a psychologically suffocating journey through isolation and emotional collapse. Sixteen-year-old Iris decides to move back in with her father after years of separation, hoping to rebuild the fragile bond between them. Yet the apartment she enters feels less like a home and more like the physical reflection of an inner breakdown.

Surrounded by clutter, silence, and emotional decay, Iris slowly discovers that her father suffers from Diogenes Syndrome. As the relationship between them unfolds, the film explores loneliness, fear, emotional fragility, and the painful possibility of losing a parent for the second time.

Built through intimate framing, confined spaces, dim lighting, and restrained emotional rhythm, the film transforms everyday details into psychological tension. Its cinematic language relies on silence, atmosphere, and emotional proximity rather than dramatic confrontation, creating a deeply human experience about family, isolation, and vulnerability.

About the Director:

French filmmaker Gaëlle Sellin belongs to a new generation of European directors focused on intimate human storytelling and psychologically driven cinema, where emotional states and internal tension become central cinematic elements.

A graduate of CinéCréatis in Nantes, Sellin’s work explores fragile family dynamics, emotional isolation, and the quiet complexity of human relationships through realistic and visually intimate filmmaking.

In DIOGÈNE, she constructs the film through emotional rhythm, spatial composition, and psychological atmosphere more than conventional narrative action. Her visual approach emphasizes silence, confined environments, and subtle emotional movement, giving the film a cinematic tone closely connected to contemporary European psychological cinema.

About the Actress:

French actress Marie Alexandre delivered a deeply nuanced and emotionally restrained performance in the role of Iris, relying on silence, subtle gestures, and internal emotional shifts rather than expressive melodrama.

Her performance captured the gradual psychological transformation of the character through minimal movement and emotional precision, creating a strong emotional connection between the audience and Iris’s fragile inner world.

Through her controlled and intimate screen presence, Marie Alexandre became one of the emotional pillars of the film, earning the Best Acting Award at the 5th edition of the Kobani International Film Festival 2024.