Cinema
Director
Barbara Arsenault had a camera in her hands from an early age. A cinephile and curious about the world around her, she quickly developed a passion for documentaries. She trained at a journalism school, specializing in television. Geopolitics, sociology, economics, anthropology... provide her with the cultural background necessary for the reality she wishes to convey in her documentaries.
Based in Lyon, France, since 2015, she has set up her production company La Bobine, while keeping a foot in journalism with regular assignments for France Télévisions. Her documentaries reflect a particular interest in seldom-seen populations: prisoners, political refugees, people with disabilities... Then she directed her first feature film on the theme of chemsex.
In 2025, she completed two film projects she had been working on for three years, Les Mains du bâtiment and La Couleur de Réal, an intimate portrait of her painter grandfather, questioning his dual nationality, family relationships and the importance of what our elders pass on to us.
