Samia Dzaïr

Samia Dzaïr 

Samia Dzaïr is a filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist whose work interlaces memory, identity, and movement through the languages of cinema, traditional animation, and drawings. Rooted in a deep connection to her Algerian heritage and her family’s history of migration, her practice weaves personal narratives with broader socio-political threads, exploring the fragile yet resilient fabric of exile. Born into a lineage shaped by displacement and transmission, Dzaïr draws on ancestral knowledge – particularly artisanal practices and storytelling – to question the effects of industrialization, cultural uprooting, and the invisibilization of craft. With her ongoing projects, she tries to find ways to reconstruct memory, reassert agency, and resist erasure. Trained in animation and cinema, Samia fuses moving images with hand-crafted techniques, creating hybrid visual worlds where textures speak louder than words. Her films often center on diasporic voices, feminine legacies, and the intimate politics of transmission – nourished by familial ties, the landscapes of the North of France, where she grew up, and the Mediterranean region that continues to shape her aesthetic vision. Dzaïr is committed to telling stories that move across borders – geographically, materially, and emotionally. She is the creator and writer of The Blue Wedding (Les Noces bleues), an animated series currently in development. Rooted in the same thematic soil, this project expands her exploration of cultural exile and feminine legacy through the lens of ancestral myth – notably the figure of the primordial ogress. The Blue Wedding is supported by Doha Film Institute (Qatar) and Pictanovo (France)