Cambridge Film and Screen will be hosting the award-winning Algerian-Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist Karim Aïnouz as its Filmmaker in Residence for 2025. Aïnouz will be in Cambridge during the week of 2-6 June and will be participating in a variety of screenings and workshops with students.
Aïnouz’s distinct and innovative vision transcends formal boundaries, making feature films, documentaries, and hybrid works that range from experimental queer cinema to complex character studies and poetic explorations of his family origins. He debuted with the period feature Madame Satã (2002), a trailblazing portrayal of real-life female impersonator and street fighter João Francisco dos Santos (1900-1976), who began performing in 1930s Rio de Janeiro. The film premiered at the Un Certain Regard program of Cannes in 2002 and has since won over 40 prizes in national and international film festivals. Twenty years after its release, Film Quarterly praised the film as “a classic of queer cinema…well ahead of its time” in its representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in Brazil.
A prolific and versatile director, Aïnouz has made numerous other feature films, documentaries, and essay films, including Firebrand (2023), Mariner of the Mountains (2021), Nardjes A. (2020), Central Airport THF (2018), Futuro Beach (2014), The Silver Cliff (2011), I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You (2009), and Love for Sale (2006). Aïnouz’s 2019 melodrama The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival that year and several other international prizes. Motel Destino (2024) is Aïnouz’s latest feature.
In addition to film, Aïnouz has worked in other media, including television (he co-directed the TV series Alice for HBO Latin America), photography and video-installations that have been exhibited in The Whitney Museum of American Art, the São Paulo Biennial, the Sharjah Biennial, Berlin’s DAAD gallery and Videobrasil. Aïnouz is also a screenwriter, tutor at Porto Iracema das Artes in Fortaleza, his hometown, and member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Before devoting himself to his own film projects in 1992, Aïnouz worked as assistant director to Todd Haynes in New York and Walter Salles in Rio de Janeiro. Aïnouz holds a degree in Architecture from the University of Brasilia and a Master’s degree in Cinema Studies from the New York University. After his Master’s, he enrolled in the Program of Independent Studies of the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Cambridge Film and Screen will be hosting a series of screenings at which Aïnouz will be present for post-screening conversations with the public. A symposium on his work, featuring various researchers, will be held on 6 June. A detailed schedule for the residency will be available soon.
The Filmmaker in Residence programme was established in 2016. Filmmakers who have participated in the programme are: Joanna Hogg (2016); Gianfranco Rosi (2017); Lucrecia Martel (2018); Todd Solondz (2019); Peggy Ahwesh (2021); debbie tucker green (2022); Christophe Honoré (2023); and Onyeka Igwe (2024).
