For the second consecutive year, the visual identity of FIDMarseille has been created in collaboration with graphic designer Manon Bruet, assisted by Gabriel Dubourg. Following their first collaboration on the film 6 Annonces, commissioned from Pierre Creton for the 36th edition, Manon worked on Pauline Curnier Jardin’s film Les errants blancs (2007) for the 37th edition.
How did this collaboration begin?
When I met the FID team ahead of the 2025 edition, I told them about my desire to bring moving images back to the heart of the festival’s visual identity. Until then, the posters had tended to feature illustrations or photographs of contemporary artworks. I thought it would be interesting to reconnect the festival’s communication with the very idea of cinema, through moving images.
Can you tell us about the visual identity of the 37th edition?
The visual identity for this edition was developed based on Pauline Curnier Jardin’s 2007 film Les errants blancs. The main challenge was to build on certain ideas explored the previous year with Pierre’s film, while developing a new visual language tailored, this time, to the specific characteristics of Pauline’s film.
Last year, the work revolved largely around framing and the camera’s gaze. This year, what struck me most in Pauline Curnier Jardin’s film was the notion of sequence: the children’s appearances, movements, and shifts within the frame.
So I worked around this idea of a cinematic sequence. This led me to introduce a typographic layer inspired by film scripts and typewriters, featuring fragments of text taken from the film. As with the previous edition, it was important to me that the posters were not merely informative, but that they also conveyed a voice and a narrative.
Poster for the 37th edition of FIDMarseille
Postcard from the 37th edition of FIDMarseille
Why did you choose to keep the blue hue as a dominant element in this new visual design?
The blue layer serves several purposes. Firstly, it builds on the work carried out the previous year by creating visual continuity between the editions. But above all, it contributes to the sense of movement. By vibrating slightly, it serves as a reminder that a film or video is in fact composed of a succession of still images (usually 24 frames per second) and also evokes the early days of cinema and research into chronophotography. Finally, this blue layer adds an almost science-fiction-like dimension, echoing the atmosphere of Pauline’s film and its figures of children dressed in white overalls.
How many images from the movie did you extract and use?
I extracted about 586 images from the film. I often worked with successive series of images to preserve the sequence’s logic. At first, I focused on about forty images. Then, gradually, some were eliminated. Ultimately, the visual identity is based primarily on four key sequences and about eight central images. For each selected sequence, I chose two images taken at different moments to suggest movement or narrative progression.
Why did you choose children dressed in white as the main characters?
Even though the film features stunning landscapes and contemplative moments, it seemed clear to me that festival marketing needed a figure that was instantly recognizable. The children dressed in white became those iconic figures. They embody the film’s sense of strangeness, its fictional elements, and its narrative.
What would you like to explore in the future in terms of the visual language of film?
I think it will always depend on the film we’re working on. This experience has taught me that every film opens up its own visual possibilities. Pierre’s film led me to explore certain avenues, while Pauline’s led me to others. But there’s still so much to explore: the opening credits, the voiceover, the subtitles, the editing, the textures, the narrative forms… Cinema offers an extremely rich visual language.
Interview with Manon Bruet conducted by Eulalie Pernelet.