William Henne

William Henne (born 11 June 1969 in Ixelles, Brussels) is a Belgian comics author, filmmaker, animator, publisher, producer, and social worker. He is the co-director of the independent publishing house La Cinquième Couche and co-founder of the animation studio Zorobabel.

Biography Henne was born on 11 June 1969 in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels. In 1994, he co-founded the animation studio Zorobabel with filmmaker Delphine Renard, which functions as both a professional production house for animated short films and a centre for animation workshops. From 1997 to 2018, he coordinated the studio's Atelier Collectif, a participatory filmmaking workshop operating on a principle of collective co-authorship, which produced around forty short films.

In 1994, he self-published his first comics collection, L'Épuisement. He joined the La Cinquième Couche collective in 1998, and from around 2000 onwards, and co-directs the group with Xavier Löwenthal.

Together with Löwenthal and Thomas Boivin, Henne is widely considered one of the principal figures behind the pen name Judith Forest, under which the autobiographical comics 1h25 (2009) and Momon (2011) were published at La Cinquième Couche.

He has also worked as a social worker and video educator in priority education zone schools in Saint-Gilles.

In 2024, with Portuguese filmmaker Zepe, he co-founded the experimental animation platform Beat Bit. 2002: Audience prize, Festival du Film de Vendôme, for Le Petit Théâtre mécanique. 2003: Prix de la SABAM, 23rd Anima, Brussels, for Le Petit Théâtre mécanique. 2003: Special jury prize, Goldfish International Children's Animation Film Festival, Moscow, for Le Petit Théâtre mécanique. 2004: Grand Prix Anima, Communauté Française, Brussels, for Jan Hermann. 2006: Grand Prix Award, Akira Kurosawa Memorial Short Film Competition, Imari, Japan, for Otomi. 2011: Prix de la RTBF, Anima festival, Brussels, for Kin. 2011: Grand Prix, Anima festival, Communauté Française, Brussels, for Kin. 2022: Film on Art Prize, Brussels Art Film Festival, for Alex Barbier : portraits.