FACES IN FOCUS: PARIS

Constance Debré is always musing. Once a criminal lawyer, now a full-time writer, she approaches each with the same intellectual ferocity. Her trilogy—Playboy (2018), Love Me Tender (2020), and Nom (2022)—traces her unlearning of everything: comfort, convention, even herself. Living and writing in Paris, Constance finds no muse—only material. “Everything makes me think—which is much more interesting.”

Naïlia Harzoune trained in dance and acting at Paris’s W.A. Mozart Municipal Conservatory before finding her way to film. In Chouf, La Taularde, Made in France, and Patients, she gravitates towards stories of pressure and persistence. On screen, she brings a quiet intensity—the kind that never announces itself but always lands. Off screen, she watches people the same way she studies characters. “The seasons in Paris change people, their habits, the way they carry themselves, [and] their faces.”

Alma Jodorowsky moves between disciplines as if they were one. Actress, singer, director—each role folds into the next. The granddaughter of filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, she shares his instinct for reinvention. “It’s important to take the risk of making mistakes in order to move forward,” she says. “I like to experiment and I’m no longer afraid of failure.” From Blue is the Warmest Colour to The Shock of the Future to her band Burning Peacocks, she shifts seamlessly.

Léonie Dahan-Lamort likes a city that doesn’t match. The actress finds beauty in the mix—the way no two people look or move the same. In films like La morsure, Les Éloignés, and Block Pass, she’s drawn to roles that have space for imperfection. She credits the #MeToo movement with teaching her to speak up, and lately, she’s focusing on using her voice for those who can’t.

Clara McGregor likes cities that keep her awake. The actress and producer was raised on film sets between London, Los Angeles, and New York, before going on to study photography and film. Paris reminds her why she started—its cafés, cinemas, and constant sense of story. “Living in the present” is her daily practice, but cinema remains her language.

Rebecca Marder has known the stage since she was five. Raised in a French-American family of artists, she joined the Comédie-Française at 20—as one of its youngest members—before turning her focus to film. In A Radiant Girl, and Simone Veil, A Woman of the Century, she explores what endures when everything else is at risk. “The one thing that can never be stolen from us, even in times of war, is our inner nourishment,” she says. “The poems we learn, the people we meet, the films we watch, the music that reaches us.”

Soko moves through life like a song—finding inspiration everywhere: her child, the rush of rain, long bike rides. The French actor and musician has spent 20 years chasing sound from Augustine, and Her to her own music videos like “Destruction of the Disgusting Ugly Hate. ”Lately, she’s listening more—to nature, to podcasts, and to the women who came before her. “I am in awe of so many wonderful women around me,” she says. The next record starts there.

Miki listens to life through the walls. In her Paris apartment, every muffled argument and whispered confession becomes material. The French-Korean singer calls it instinct. “Surf the wave,” she says—a motto learned onstage when things go wrong. On her latest album, Industry Plant, she turns everything she hears—love, loss, noise, and silence—into sound. A rising voice in French pop, she’s already making the city listen back.

Annette Messager has never cared much for lessons—only for the love of life. The French artist, known for her haunting installations and stitched-together worlds that incorporate taxidermy, fabrics, photographs, toys, and embroidery, challenges ideas of identity, intimacy, and femininity. Annette finds the modern era more sad than inspiring. Still, her passion remains unchanged: “My only real passion is art,” she says. And after five decades, it shows.

Ramata-Toulaye Sy writes the spaces between love and defiance. A French-Senegalese filmmaker, she first caught attention with Astel, a short rooted in tenderness and silence, before her debut feature Banel & Adama premiered at Cannes. Her stories linger where faith meets doubt, and where freedom fronts devotion. “Even if it’s scary,” she says, “don’t be afraid to embrace your own individuality and to define for yourself what it means to be a woman.”

Melissa Boros loves that Paris has more cinemas than anywhere else in the world. An actor drawn to people who break the rules, she’s not interested in fitting into a box. “We can be many things at once,” she says. Lately, she’s thinking about the quiet ones—the artists and dreamers who build something true without needing to shout.