Director Marthe Sébille wins the 2026 Author's Career Support scheme

As part of its policy to structure professional careers in cinema and the audiovisual sector, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region and ALCA have created a dedicated grant entitled "Career Support", aimed at experienced writers and writer-directors in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Marthe Sébille and four other successful applicants are receiving this human and financial support from October 2026 to October 2028.

Biography

Born in Paris, Marthe Sébille moved to Brittany, where her encounter with the island of Ouessant marked the beginning of her journey as a filmmaker. After shooting her first short film there, she continued her work as a screenwriter and director before settling in Bordeaux. Trained in screenwriting at La Fémis and in dramatic art, she has directed four short films broadcast on France Télévisions and selected for festivals, including Clermont-Ferrand. She is currently developing several feature-length and series projects. At the same time, she is involved in film education with various audiences in the regional territory and teaches directing and screenwriting at several film schools. She has also been a reader for the CNC, notably for the Aide au cinéma du monde (World Cinema Support), for several years. Her cinema, physical and sensory, on the border of the real and the strange, relies on bodies, landscapes and light to bring forth what escapes words, what shakes up certainties and seeks, at the heart of fractures, a possibility of emancipation and resistance.

Project presentation

"I am currently developing three projects:

Les éclats (Splinters), a feature film set on the island of Ouessant, where the arrival of a foreign shipwreck survivor disrupts an island community. Between social satire and magical realism, only Mira, a mute child, seems to perceive what adults refuse to see. Conceived in 35 mm, the film will seek to capture the island's light, its ghosts and the complexity of human relations, between cruelty and poetry.

Un invincible été (An Invincible Summer), follows in a mini-series the fight of parents confronted with the multiplicity of their children's cancers. Faced with the silence they encounter, they mobilise and unite a whole territory to bring out the truth about the ravages of pesticides.

Coûte que coûte (At All Costs), a thriller that plunges us alongside Antonia, a demoted doctor who sees her son's success as revenge on her own condition. When she discovers he is guilty of murder, she chooses to protect him at all costs, even if it means denying her own principles." Marthe Sébille

Selective filmography

• Que la bête monte (Let the Beast Rise), short film directed in 2021, produced by Dolce Vita Films, broadcast on France 2 and France Culture, selected at Clermont-Ferrand, at Unifrance's MyFrenchFilmFestival and the Institut Français.
• Quand les branches se querellent, les racines s’embrassent (When the Branches Quarrel, the Roots Embrace), directed in 2014, produced by Iloz Productions, broadcast on France 3. Selected at the Brest European Short Film Festival; Villeurbanne European Festival; Aix-en-Provence International Festival; Courts devant Festival in Paris.