Antoine Chapon is a French artist and filmmaker. His films are hybrid experimental documentaries that combine archival footage, CGI, and staged testimonies. His work explores how traumatized individuals or communities can appropriate the tools of oppressive power to tell their own stories. Chapon is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and the IDFA Academy and he is currently working on his first feature-length documentary, NEHIR, in Greece.
His first short film, My Own Landscapes, won Best Short Film at Visions du Réel and it has been screened at festivals including Sundance, Telluride, Palm Springs, Sarajevo, Torino, Flickers’ Rhode Island, and Premiers Plans. His work has also been exhibited at ZKM | Karlsruhe, Centre Pompidou, 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, and Singapore Art Museum. In 2025, his second short documentary, Al Basateen (The Orchards), was selected for the Berlinale Forum Expanded and the MoMA Doc Fortnight Film Festival.
At MacDowell, Chapon wrote a first draft of the screenplay for his debut fiction feature film. The story followed a French soldier returning from Mali, where he had just lost the man he loved—a brother-in-arms—in the explosion of an armored vehicle. After a few days back at the barracks, the ghost of the deceased returned to ask his lover for a body so he could stop wandering. He also presented to Dublin School students, talking about film and process, as part of MacDowell in the Schools while in residence.
During his residency, he received news of numerous awards for his latest film Al Basateen, which was selected for AFI Fest (U.S.A.) and the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Canada). It was also selected by the César Academy for the 2026 awards.
Portrait by Leo Hugendubel
