The multi-award-winning Franco-Swiss filmmaker explores the hidden face of the human being. In a dozen short and feature-length films that straddle the fiction/documentary divide, she has created a body of work that stands apart from the rest of the cinematic landscape.
Ursula Meier is a graduate of Belgium’s “Institut des Arts de Diffusion”. Her graduation film, “Le songe d’Isaac” (Isaac’s Dream), followed by “Des heures sans sommeil” (Sleepless) both caught the attention of the profession. They enabled her to devote herself to directing works that play with different genres and create singular universes. They have won awards at numerous festivals. In 2008, her film “Home” was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and won many accolades around the world. Her second feature film, “L’enfant d’en haut”(Sister) (2012), won the Silver Bear in Berlin and represented Switzerland at the Oscars. It won three Quartz prizes at the Swiss Film Awards, including Best Fiction Film.
In 2012, Ursula Meier was a member of the jury at the Venice Film Festival, and in 2013 at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival. That year, she produced “The Blocher Experience”.
In 2018, she returned to Berlin to present her TV film “Journal de ma tête” (Diary of my mind), part of “Ondes de choc” (Shock waves), a mini-series of four films inspired by news items in Switzerland. She was awarded the “Suissimage Prize” along with young filmmaker Carmen Jaquier. Finally, that same year, Ursula Meier was president of the “Caméra d’or” jury at the 71st Cannes Film Festival.
Over three decades, Ursula Meier has made a lasting impression on audiences with her short and feature films. The birth of her vocation was triggered by an intense experience. At the age of eight, she went by mistake into the wrong cinema and watched a violent film with a friend, Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter”. The little girl was shaken up by this highly emotional experience. It undoubtedly had an unconscious impact on her choice of career and the desire to offer images that will remain forever imprinted on the viewer’s eye.
