Tollenaere, Isabelle

Isabelle Tollenaere is a Belgian filmmaker making hybrid short and feature length films that are
simultaneously poetic, political, and playful. Her practice focuses on the interplay between the
rapid transformation of our physical world and the human experience of time and memory. Guided
by a fascination with places that vanish or, conversely, are artificially replicated, she looks at how
human beings seek their way amidst social and historical shifts. Rather than focusing on the event
itself, she explores its resonance within the landscape and the human interior. In doing so, she is
fascinated by the erratic nature of memory: how we constantly rearrange, color, or lose fragments
of the past within the folds of time.
Her filmography includes VIVA PARADIS (short, 2011), BATTLES (feature, 2015), THE
REMEMBERED FILM (short, 2018), VICTORIA (feature, 2020, in co-direction), and THE FRUIT
TREE (short, 2022). PARIS PARIS (feature, 2026) is her first scripted feature film.
Her films have been widely presented and awarded, ao at the Venice International Film Festival,
Berlinale Forum (Caligari Film Prize 2020), IFFR (Fipresci award 2015), Centre Pompidou,
Viennale, Visions Du Réel, FID Marseille, IDFA, CPH:DOX, IndieLisboa (Special Jury Prize 2020),
etc.
Beyond her own films she creates video installations, mentors film students and emerging
filmmakers, and works as an editor. She’s also part of Ursula, a collective of women working with
the moving image.
Her work is distributed by argos, Dalton Distribution, Filmotor and Square Eyes.