Pierre-Alain Giraud — Biography
Pierre-Alain Giraud is a director of immersive works, documentaries, short fiction films and animated films. Co-founder of Novaya, a company that invents new forms of immersive storytelling and develops the technologies behind them, he co-directed with Stéphane Foenkinos Noire (Colored), based on the book by Tania de Montaigne — premiered at the Centre Pompidou, selected at Tribeca and the BFI London Film Festival, awarded Best Immersive Work at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and, in June 2026, first laureate of the Annwn Prize.
His latest creation, Playing with Fire: an immersive odyssey with Yuja Wang, a mixed-reality experience conceived with pianist Yuja Wang, opened in November 2025 at the Philharmonie de Paris for six months, before travelling to the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Presented in world premiere in the Immersive Competition of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, it runs at London’s Southbank Centre from September 2026 to January 2027, and will be presented at New York’s Lincoln Center in 2027.
In 2023, he produced and co-directed with Gabríela Friðriksdóttir the animated film for Björk’s Victimhood (Fossora), projected on stage during the Cornucopia 2 world tour. With Anne Brochet, he co-directed two feature documentaries selected at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival: Rêve de mouette (2023) and Une cabine à soi (France 3, 2025). He pursues a long collaboration with Arthur Nauzyciel: after The Empire of Lights — from which he drew a short film shown in several international festivals — and an adaptation of La Dame aux camélias co-written with Valérie Mréjen, he directed the stage films for Jean Genet’s The Screens (2024) and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (2026). His earlier immersive works include Solastalgia (Sundance 2020). From 2012 to 2016, he directed a documentary about an Icelandic label and music videos for Valgeir Sigurðsson, Sigur Rós and Nico Muhly.
An engineering graduate of Arts et Métiers, holder of a master’s degree in directing from the London Film School and a 2021 laureate of the CNC’s Parcours d’auteur, he explores the links between cinema, music and immersive technologies.
Awards & selections
Playing with Fire · 2025
Official selection — Immersive Competition
79th Cannes Film Festival · 2026
Innovation Award
Classical:NEXT, Budapest · 2026
Noire · 2023
Best Immersive Work — 1st Immersive Competition
77th Cannes Film Festival · 2024
Annwn Prize — inaugural immersive storytelling award
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff · 2026
Thea Award — Outstanding Achievement, XR Exhibit
Themed Entertainment Association · 2024
Best XR
Luxembourg City Film Festival · 2024
Jury prize
SIMA Awards · 2024
Best Screenplay or Storytelling & Best Live Experience
XRMust XR Awards · 2023
Official selection — New Voices Competition, Tribeca Immersive
Tribeca Festival · 2023
Official selection — LFF Expanded
BFI London Film Festival · 2023
Best Pitch
Sunny Side of the Doc · 2021
Victimhood · 2023
Official selection — Music Video Session
London International Animation Festival · 2024
Une cabine à soi · 2025
Official selection — “Nouveaux regards” section
Angoulême Francophone Film Festival · 2025
Solastalgia · 2019
Official selection — New Frontier
Sundance Film Festival · 2020
Cannes XR — Development Showcase, Marché du Film
Cannes Film Festival · 2019
Festival de cinéma de la ville de Québec — official selection
Canada · 2019
Kaohsiung Film Festival — international short film competition
Taiwan · 2019
Cairo International Film Festival — Cinema of Tomorrow Competition
Egypt · 2019
DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival, Washington
United States · 2020
Rêve de mouette · 2023
Official selection — “Nouveaux Regards” section
Angoulême Francophone Film Festival · 2023
AIŌN · 2019
Gríma Awards — Music of the Year & Choreographer of the Year, nominated for Production of the Year
Iceland · 2022
Montmartre, la nuit · in development
Selected — Venice Gap-Financing Market, 83rd Venice International Film Festival
2026
A Portrait of You · 2009
Audience award (film schools)
Les Arcs European Film Festival
Press
Press coverage of the works, project by project — quotes and articles.
Playing with Fire
20 articles
“That’s not really cinema even, but it certainly is art.”
“A retrofuturist spectacle — Ravel would have approved.”
“Real poetry… and a stunning sophistication in its execution.”
“Blazing images, evocative scents and notes of classical music — the immersive exhibition Playing with Fire awakens the senses.”
Noire
24 articles
“NOIRE is a shock, with powerful civic virtues. A fantastic tool for raising awareness, especially for younger audiences. An essential exhibition… but it’s fully booked.”
“Simply bluffing and moving. If you are wondering what new technologies can bring to culture and our apprehension of art and knowledge, this augmented reality experience will remove any doubt you may still have… Mind-blowing.”
“A sensory experience, original and disturbing: archives and videos are projected on a screen while we physically move among the holographic spectres of the characters of the past. A new and powerful way to transmit history.”
“A story about the heart and its consequences that we could not stop thinking about long after experiencing it.”
Une cabine à soi
8 articles
« Un art de vivre minimaliste et propice à la rêverie… une parenthèse ludique et poétique. »
« Anne Brochet met en scène, de façon poétique et légère, sa présence singulière et sa fantaisie contagieuse. »
« Ce film m’a permis d’aller toquer aux portes. J’avais besoin d’un alibi. »
« Ces cabines sont une fabrique à souvenir qui se transmet dans une pure tradition filiale. »
Victimhood — video for Björk
8 articles
“Ominous and organic, matching the bassy woodwinds and driving beat of ‘Victimhood’.”
“Colorful, psychedelic animation, yet with a sense of melancholy and even a dash of the macabre.”
“These characters are so magical, they just have such deep, deep meaning for me.”
Solastalgia
5 articles
“The first work created and screened on the HoloLens 2.”
“The last generations of humans are living as holograms, repeating the same scenes over and over again.”
« La solastalgie définit la détresse existentielle face à cet environnement qui disparaît. »
Rêve de mouette
4 articles
« …celle qu’elle cherche à devenir : une femme qui promène son chien dans la joie. »
« Sonder les tourments et les élans d’une vie d’actrice, entre Los Angeles, sa famille, son chien et le théâtre de Tchekhov. »
The Empire of Lights — the short film
4 articles
AIŌN
5 articles
“The stunning video work projected on the birchwood walls of the concert hall, all rocks and water.”
“The same archaic brutality as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.”
“AION is among the best art I have experienced… it is enchanting.”
Örævi
4 articles
“The human body becomes an alien landscape.”
“Hvernig er hægt að dansa undir smásjá?” — How can one dance under a microscope?
Magnús Guðmundsson, Fréttablaðið — a full Culture page, February 1, 2018
“Sigur Rós have soundtracked a new art installation in Reykjavík.”
Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists
2 articles
“A true feast for eyes and ears… a performance I cannot stop thinking about.”
“A great and magnificent weaving takes place onstage.”
Víðsjá, RÚV — Iceland’s cultural radio
“A renewed hope for opera-theatre.”
Films for the stage — Arthur Nauzyciel
20 articles
« Une mise en scène mémorable et somptueuse. »
« Un grand geste poétique d’une beauté absolue. »
« C’est la première fois qu’Arthur Nauzyciel utilise la vidéo comme une composante essentielle d’un spectacle, et c’est une réussite — saluons la conception et la réalisation d’Ingi Bekk et de Pierre-Alain Giraud. »
« D’une beauté époustouflante, les images projetées sur de hauts pans de murs gris donnent à voir la ville. »
« L’interprète s’enveloppe dans les vidéos de son complice, le cinéaste Pierre-Alain Giraud. »
Joëlle Gayot, Télérama — November 2022
« Les flots chatoyants… que les vidéos de Pierre-Alain Giraud (qui signe également la création sonore) donnent à voir sur le plateau. »
« Un documentaire savoureux, en forme de comédie. »
“Stage a gothic fairytale about a wife-killer in an atmospheric London graveyard… and you know you’re onto a memorable theatre experience.”
“…the fragmented film sections which drew attention to perspective and voyeurism.”
“Marianne Badrichani has created a world of genius and beautiful folly… surreal, erotic and profoundly absurd, leaving us baffled, bewitched and, in some cases, breathless with laughter.”
“Unmissable. Funny, clever, exhilarating theatre.”
“A feast of innovation and ideas.”
« Un documentaire savoureux, en forme de comédie, un film hybride réussi et maîtrisé. […] Un film où s’équilibrent l’intime et la fantaisie, la réflexion et le ludique. »
« Entre autofiction, analyse sociologique et fables modernes, une réflexion intimiste sur l’identité civique que ne renierait pas La Fontaine. »
« Un film vivant sur la mémoire, à la fois mélancolique et stimulant. »
Collaborators
The artists Pierre-Alain Giraud works with, most of them for many years.
Yuja Wang
Pianist
Born in Beijing and trained at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, she is one of the leading pianists of her generation. She performs with the world’s major orchestras and records for Deutsche Grammophon.
Together: Playing with Fire
Visual artist
Icelandic artist, she represented Iceland at the 2005 Venice Biennale and is a long-standing collaborator of Björk. Painting, sculpture, drawing, video.
Together: Crepusculum, The Inner Life of a Hay Bale, Dies Irae, Cabin Fever, Victimhood, Playing with Fire (creative direction), the sets of L’Or d’Amazon — dedicated page
Stage director
Director of the Théâtre National de Bretagne since 2017, after the CDN d’Orléans. He creates work in France, the United States, Korea and Iceland.
Together: The Empire of Lights (and its short film), La Dame aux camélias, The Screens, Le Papillon Noir, Scenes from a Marriage — dedicated page
Actress, writer, director
Revealed in Cyrano de Bergerac, César for Best Supporting Actress for Tous les matins du monde, author of five books.
Together: Rêve de mouette, Une cabine à soi, Odile et l’eau, and the editing of her films — dedicated page
Tania de Montaigne
Author
Author of novels and essays — Noire, la vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin (Simone Veil Prize 2015), L’Assignation (Laïcité Prize 2018). Associate artist at the TNB, columnist for Libération.
Together: Noire, Montmartre, la nuit
Stéphane Foenkinos
Film and stage director
Casting director for more than twenty years, co-director with David Foenkinos of La Délicatesse, Jalouse and Les Fantasmes. He has adapted and staged Tania de Montaigne for the theatre since 2019.
Together: Noire, Montmartre, la nuit
Stage director
French-British stage director based in London, trained at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.
Together: Blue Beard, Trois Ruptures, Dinner at the Smith’s — dedicated page
Valgeir Sigurðsson
Composer, producer
Founder of the Greenhouse studios in Reykjavik, long-time collaborator of Björk. He has produced or recorded Feist, Damon Albarn, Ben Frost, Sigur Rós, Brian Eno.
Together: Winter Sleep, Everything Everywhere All The Time, Wide Slumber, the music of Noire and L’Or d’Amazon
Nicolas Becker
Sound designer
Academy Award for Best Sound 2021 for Sound of Metal. He has worked with Polanski, Cronenberg, Andrea Arnold, Danny Boyle, Alfonso Cuarón.
Laurence Fontaine
Set designer
Trained as an architect, exhibition designer for thirty years at the Centre Pompidou — and for the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Hermès house.