Pierre-Alain Giraud

Pierre-Alain Giraud (born 1982) is a French film director, editor and creator of immersive works, and a co-founder of the Paris-based production company Novaya. With Stéphane Foenkinos he co-directed Colored (Noire), an augmented reality adaptation of Tania de Montaigne's essay on Claudette Colvin, which received the first Award for Best Immersive Work at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and the inaugural Annwn Prize in 2026. He wrote and directed Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang, a mixed reality concert experience with the pianist Yuja Wang that opened at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2025 and was selected for the Immersive Competition of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. He also co-directed, with the artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, the animated video for Björk's "Victimhood".

Early life and education Giraud trained as an engineer before turning to cinema.

Career Iceland and Bedroom Community After film school, Giraud settled for a time in Iceland, where he worked with musicians of the Reykjavík label Bedroom Community. and followed Ben Frost, Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly and Sam Amidon on the label's 2010 European tour to make the documentary feature Everything, Everywhere, All the Time (2011). He also created the visuals for Sigurðsson's chamber opera Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (2014).

Editing As an editor, Giraud worked on the documentaries La Reine s'évade (2010) and Brochet comme le poisson (2013) by the actress Anne Brochet, Les Enfants des mille jours (2013) by Jaco Bidermann and Claudia Soto Mansilla, and Antoine Viviani's interactive documentary In Limbo (2015), co-produced by Arte and the National Film Board of Canada and presented at IDFA.

Theatre and stage films Since 2016 Giraud has collaborated regularly with the stage director Arthur Nauzyciel. He directed the films for Nauzyciel's L'Empire des lumières, an adaptation of Kim Young-ha's novel Your Republic Is Calling You created at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul with Moon So-ri in the lead role and later presented at the MC93 in Bobigny. From this material he made a short film, L'Empire des lumières (2019), selected in the Cinema of Tomorrow competition of the Cairo International Film Festival. For Nauzyciel's 2018 production of La Dame aux Camélias at the Théâtre National de Bretagne, he co-wrote the adaptation with Valérie Mréjen and directed the films projected on stage. He subsequently created the video for Nauzyciel's production of Jean Genet's Les Paravents (2023–2024), presented at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, and the stage films for his production of Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage (2026).

In February 2018 he directed Öræfi, a video installation with music by Sigur Rós, created with the choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir and Valdimar Jóhannsson for the Iceland Dance Company and shown on two oil tanks during the Reykjavík Winter Lights Festival. With Jóhannsson he also created the video projections for Aiōn (2019), an orchestral work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir choreographed by Ómarsdóttir and premiered by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 he directed the videos for Stéphane Foenkinos's stage adaptation of Tania de Montaigne's Noire at the Théâtre du Rond-Point.

Immersive works With Antoine Viviani, Giraud created Solastalgia (2019), a mixed-reality installation first shown at Les Champs Libres in Rennes and selected in the New Frontier section of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Colored (Noire), co-directed with Foenkinos, adapts de Montaigne's essay Noire: La Vie méconnue de Claudette Colvin. In this location-based augmented-reality installation, visitors wearing HoloLens 2 headsets follow the story of the fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1955. and was then selected in the New Voices competition of Tribeca Immersive at the 2023 Tribeca Festival and in the LFF Expanded programme of the 2023 BFI London Film Festival. In May 2024 it received the Award for Best Immersive Work at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, the first edition of the festival's Immersive Competition, from a jury chaired by Marie Amachoukeli. The work also received a Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Extended Reality Exhibit category from the Themed Entertainment Association, the immersive experience award at the 2024 Luxembourg City Film Festival, and, in June 2026, the inaugural Annwn Prize for immersive storytelling, awarded by the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff with a jury chaired by Peter Swinburn.

Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang, written and directed by Giraud with original artwork by Gabríela Friðriksdóttir and produced by VIVE Arts and Atlas V, is a mixed-reality experience in which the pianist Yuja Wang performs works by Bach, Debussy, Chopin, Stravinsky and Prokofiev. It opened at the Musée de la musique – Philharmonie de Paris on 14 November 2025 for a run through May 2026, received a 2026 Innovation Award from Classical:NEXT, and was selected for the Immersive Competition of the 79th Cannes Film Festival in May 2026. After Paris the work was presented in Shanghai;

Music video and documentary In 2023 Giraud co-directed with Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, and animated, the video for Björk's "Victimhood", from the album Fossora, built from Friðriksdóttir's oil paintings.

With Anne Brochet he co-directed two documentary features presented in the Nouveaux Regards section of the Festival du film francophone d'Angoulême: Rêve de mouette (2022), shot in Los Angeles, and Une cabine à soi (2025), filmed among the beach huts of Cayeux-sur-Mer.

Novaya Giraud is a co-founder of Novaya, a Paris-based company that develops immersive narrative works and the technologies used to produce them; it produced Colored with Flash Forward Entertainment and the Centre Pompidou. and the immersive project Montmartre, la nuit, by Giraud and Foenkinos, was selected for the Venice Gap-Financing Market of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

Selected works Immersive works Year Title Notes 2019 Solastalgia Mixed-reality installation, with Antoine Viviani; Les Champs Libres, Rennes; Sundance Film Festival 2020 (New Frontier) 2023 Colored (Noire) Augmented-reality installation, with Stéphane Foenkinos, after Tania de Montaigne; Centre Pompidou; Tribeca Festival 2023; BFI London Film Festival 2023; Cannes Film Festival 2024 2025 Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang Mixed-reality experience; Philharmonie de Paris; Cannes Film Festival 2026 (Immersive Competition); Shanghai; Southbank Centre 2026–27

Films Year Title Role Notes 2009 A Portrait of You Director Short film, London Film School 2009 "Winter Sleep" Director Music video, Valgeir Sigurðsson and Dawn McCarthy 2010 La Reine s'évade Editor Documentary by Anne Brochet 2011 Everything, Everywhere, All the Time Director Documentary feature on Bedroom Community 2013 Brochet comme le poisson Editor Documentary by Anne Brochet 2013 Les Enfants des mille jours Editor Documentary by Jaco Bidermann and Claudia Soto Mansilla 2015 In Limbo Editor Interactive documentary by Antoine Viviani 2018 Öræfi Director Video installation with Sigur Rós and the Iceland Dance Company 2019 L'Empire des lumières Director Short film; Cairo International Film Festival 2022 Rêve de mouette Co-director Documentary feature, with Anne Brochet 2023 "Victimhood" Co-director, animation Music video for Björk, with Gabríela Friðriksdóttir 2025 Une cabine à soi Co-director Documentary feature, with Anne Brochet; France 3

Stage Year Production Role Notes 2014 Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists Visuals Chamber opera by Valgeir Sigurðsson 2016 L'Empire des lumières Films Directed by Arthur Nauzyciel; National Theater of Korea, MC93 2018 La Dame aux camélias Co-adaptation (with Valérie Mréjen), films Directed by Arthur Nauzyciel; Théâtre National de Bretagne 2019 Aiōn Video (with Valdimar Jóhannsson) Anna Thorvaldsdottir / Erna Ómarsdóttir; Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra 2019 Noire Videos Directed by Stéphane Foenkinos; Théâtre du Rond-Point 2023 Les Paravents Video Directed by Arthur Nauzyciel; Théâtre National de Bretagne, Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe 2026 Scènes de la vie conjugale Films Directed by Arthur Nauzyciel; Théâtre National de Bretagne

Awards 2024: Award for Best Immersive Work, 77th Cannes Film Festival, for Colored (Noire) 2024: Thea Award for Outstanding Achievement – Extended Reality Exhibit, Themed Entertainment Association, for Noire 2024: Best immersive experience, Luxembourg City Film Festival, for Noire 2026: Annwn Prize, Wales Millennium Centre, for Colored (Noire) 2026: Innovation Award, Classical:NEXT, for Playing with Fire