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Céline Sallette

Director
Céline Sallette is a French actress who has become a fixture in European cinema with her precise expression and emotional complexity. Her career began after graduating from the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique in Paris, and she quickly established herself as a distinctive voice in modern French cinema. In BRIGHT WOMEN (2022), directed by Élodie Lélue, she took on a leading role that impressively underscores her sensitivity for psychological depth. According to Cineuropa, the drama, which revolves around strong female characters, ties in with themes that Sallette repeatedly addresses in her work—inner turmoil, self-assertion, and social structures. She became known to a wide audience through her role in Bertrand Bonello's “House of Pleasure” (2011), for which she received a César nomination for Best Young Actress. Other notable works include Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone (2012), Cédric Jimenez's The Connection (2014), and the internationally successful series The Returned (2012–2015), in which she played one of the central characters. She also demonstrated her versatility in Infiniti (2022), a challenging series production with science fiction elements. Céline Sallette was a member of the jury in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2016, underscoring her enduring importance to French auteur cinema. Her film career combines artistic consistency with emotional authenticity—qualities that make her one of the most prominent actresses of her generation.

Films

Bright Women

Bright Women

By Sylvie Gautier

2023 | 102 min | Comedy

Karine becomes the leader in the fight for her job, but the young woman is tetanized by an invisible handicap.

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The Smoothness of Our Teeth

The Smoothness of Our Teeth

2021 | 28 min | Drama

A young Romanian woman visits her uncle, who emigrated to the United States many years ago to build a new life as a baker. What begins as a happy reunion soon turns into a trial of strength, when a broken tooth that the uncle refuses to have treated raises questions about identity, origins and life choices. Editor Note Anna-Lena Engelhardt: THE SMOOTHNESS OF OUR TEETH is my Master of Arts graduation film at the Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg. Poetry, subtlety and a kind of softness mixed ...

Everything Has an End

Everything Has an End

2022 | 15 min | Comedy

Helen tries to do everything right, but the customers aren't interested in the middle-aged woman in the vendor's tray sausage grill. As the straps cut deeper and deeper, Helen has to break out and from then on does everything wrong, or right? Go Helen! The oversized sausage hovers over Helen's head like a thundercloud. The bratwurst metal corset glows in bright color, but no one approaches the mid-50-year-old as if she were invisible. Despite her precarious work situation, she wants to meet the ...

Ella

Ella

2014 | 15 min | Shorts

Ella is a Polish migrant worker who works in Germany to finance her daughter's studies in Poland. Due to illness, her job seems to be in jeopardy. When her daughter decides to come to Germany and faces the same fate as Ella, the mother decides to blackmail her boss for severance pay. The film ELLA deals with social tensions and dependencies that recur in many European migration biographies. The short film focuses on family responsibility, structural exploitation, and the tension between origin and ...

Tomorrow I Leave

Tomorrow I Leave

2024 | 75 min | Documentary

Torn between two worlds: Maria regularly leaves her home in Romania to work as a 24-hour caregiver in Austria. Her sons grow up in Ibănești while she cares for a woman in need of nursing care in Vienna. Every goodbye is difficult, every return is marked by joy, but also by the certainty that she will soon have to leave again. MÂINE MĂ DUC – TOMORROW I LEAVE by Lukas Schöffel and Maria Lisa Pichler is an intimate documentary about the reality of life for many Eastern European caregivers who balance ...

I Knew You Were My Kind

I Knew You Were My Kind

2023 | 18 min | Shorts

Set in the deserted off-season on the Italian coast, caregivers Anca and Zoya meet at a bus stop shortly before returning home and decide to visit a client's abandoned beach house. A brief vacation turns into a moment of solidarity and tenderness that challenges the structural norms that govern their daily lives. “The discourse on the inner-European class question has never been more present and at the same time more repressed. As a German-Romanian, I encounter these socio-economic conditions every ...

Raju

Raju

2010 | 23 min | Drama

In this Oscar nominated short, a German couple, played by Wotan Wilke Möhring and Julia Richter, adopts an Indian orphan in Kolkata. On their way to the hotel, the boy disappears. The German officials have recommended a local Indian orphanage to them. There the four-year-old boy Raju, who comes from a slum, is introduced to them and handed over. When the boy suddenly disappears and the Indian police cannot get any further with their investigations, Jan himself starts an intensive search.

Europa Passage

Europa Passage

2022 | 89 min | Documentary

EUROPA PASSAGE is a profound documentary film by Andrei Schwartz that follows the lives of a group of Romanian Roma over five years. These families commute between their home village of Namaiesti in Romania and Hamburg to earn a living by begging, as there are no job opportunities available to them at home. The film shows the constant challenges and difficulties they face, from discrimination and exclusion from urban emergency programs to the simple living conditions in their village. The story ...

The Discarded Father

The Discarded Father

2008 | 82 min | Documentary

Douglas Wolfsperger explores a social phenomenon that rarely appears in public discourse: men, who after a separation from their wives, are "disposed of" not only as partners but also as fathers and who - often in vain - struggle to maintain a relationship with their children. In moving interviews, four fathers describe their suffering and efforts to keep contact with their children. A mother justifies the refusal of contact from her point of view. Despite the seriousness of the topic, the film ...

Disappearing

Disappearing

2022 | 98 min | Documentary

In the heart of Southern Carinthia, a story unfolds that is deeply rooted in a century-old decision. In 1920, like many in the Slovenian community of Carinthia, filmmaker Andrina Mracnikar's grandfather voted for Carinthia to remain within the Republic of Austria, an act of self-determination expected to herald a new era of coexistence for the Slovenian minority. However, the reality that unfolded was starkly different, marking the beginning of a century-long struggle against discrimination. Andrina ...

Me Time

Me Time

2022 | 86 min | Documentary

In this documentary, six protagonists share their personal experiences of abortion and sterilization, from unplanned pregnancy to becoming a happy mother, and vice versa, from wanting a child to regretting motherhood. With openness and humor, taboo topics are discussed, provocative questions are answered, and political laws are challenged. From discussing the challenges of balancing care work and career, the ecological footprint and sustainability with children, selfishness and adoption, to feelings ...