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# Isidore Bethel

Isidore Bethel is a filmmaker whose work has screened in the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection, at the Museum of Modern Art, and on American public television.

## Sitemaps

- [XML Sitemap](https://isidorebethel.com/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website.

## Posts

- [What Comes from Sitting in Silence? - 2026](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/what-comes-from-sitting-in-silence-2026-2/) - In the heart of Mumbai, Khatoon runs India’s first women’s Sharia court, offering plaintiffs rare permission to speak out and seek justice. - edited and co-produced by Isidore Bethel (USA) / directed and co-produced by Sophie Schrago (Switzerland) / produced by Pauline Tran Van Lieu and Lucie Rego (Hutong Productions, France), Heejung Oh and Sarah Kang (Seesaw
- [Grandir - 2013](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/grandir/) - ACID Cannes. After her father's death, filmmaker Dominique Cabrera investigates her mother’s anonymous birth in an Algerian hospital.
- [](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/cv/) - Isidore Bethel – CV HONORS & FELLOWSHIPS: 2025 - National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) jury member, Experimental Shorts section. - Movies that Matter Rough Cut Service (as editor of What Comes from Sitting in Silence?). - True/False & Catapult Rough Cut Retreat (as editor of What Comes from Sitting in Silence?). -
- [Rehearsal for an Encounter - 2025](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/rehearsal-for-an-encounter-2025/) - Charlie prepares to meet his biological mother for the first time. - edited and co-produced by Isidore Bethel / directed and produced by Dahee Kim (USA) - San Francisco IFF, New/Next FF (Baltimore, MD), Minneapolis St. Paul IFF - 5 minutes
- [Liam (As Long as it Would Take to Live It) - 2018](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/liam/) - Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival Jury Prize. The filmmaker mourns the death of his best friend through documentary, performance, and animation in France and the US.
- [Of Men and War - 2014](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/of_men_and_war/) - Cannes Official Selection. Over years of therapy, Of Men and War traces paths of combat veterans making peace with themselves, their past, and their families.
- [Blue Room - 2022](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/blue-room-2022/) - In two US prisons, participants in a mental health experiment watch nature videos on loop, prompting them to reflect on isolation and wilderness. - edited and associate produced by Isidore Bethel / directed and produced by Merete Mueller (USA) - Aeon (original edit), The New York Times’ Op-Docs (Season Nine, NYT re-edit), Criterion Channel (streaming)
- [So Late So Soon - 2020](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/so-late-so-soon-2020/) - True/False Film Festival. A half-century into their marriage, two Chicago artists look back at their lives together and contend with a never-ending series of house repairs.
- [Hummingbirds - 2023](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/hummingbirds-2023/) - Silvia and Beba tell their own coming-of-age story, transforming their hometown on the Texas-Mexico border into a wonderland of creative expression and activist hijinks. Filmed collaboratively over the final summer of their fleeting youth, their cinematic self-portrait celebrates the power of friendship and joy as tools of survival and resistance. - edited and co-produced by
- [Acts of Love - 2021](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/acts-of-love-2021/) - Hot Docs. The filmmaker relocates to Chicago and uses dating apps to cast new lovers in an amorphous project that his mother hates.
- [Happy You're Here - in progress](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/happy_youre_here/) - Tribeca Film Institute Network. An Ethiopian-American filmmaker's coming-of-age story in Ethiopia, the United States, and France.
- [Wi Cyah Stay - 2025](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/wi-cyah-stay-2025/) - When their homes in rural Jamaica become unsafe, two cousins dare to confide in their aunt. - edited and produced by Isidore Bethel / produced, written, and directed by Nordia Hunt (Jamaica, USA) - NAH Switch Storytelling - Trinidad and Tobago FF, New/Next FF (Baltimore, MD), BronzeLens FF (Atlanta), Skylark Negril FF (Jamaica), Queen City
- [La Balada del Oppenheimer Park - 2016](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/the_ballad_of_oppenheimer_park/) - Mexican Academy Award Best Documentary Nominee. First Nations people occupy a Vancouver park, enacting rituals complicating their oppression and resistance.
- [Caballerango - 2018](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/caballerango-2018/) - IDFA. Members of a family in the Mexican state of Jalisco reflect on a young man’s disappearance under the watchful eyes of the horse who saw him last.
- [The Taste of Mango - 2023](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/the-taste-of-mango-2023/) - Chloe Abrahams probes raw questions her mother and grandmother have long brushed aside, tenderly untangling painful knots in her family’s unspoken past. - edited by Isidore Bethel / also edited by Chloe Abrahams and Stella Heath Keir / directed by Chloe Abrahams / produced by Chloe Abrahams and Elliott Whitton (UK) / executive produced by Kellen
- [Some Kind of Intimacy - 2021](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/some-kind-of-intimacy-2021/) - A filmmaker tries to communicate with sheep living where his parents are buried. - edited and produced by Isidore Bethel (France) / directed and produced by Toby Bull (UK) - Visions du Réel, Sundance FF: London, Viennale, IndieLisboa, First Look (Museum of the Moving Image), RIDM, DokuFest, BFI London FF (Network), Angers European First FF,
- [What We Leave Behind - 2022](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/what-we-leave-behind-2022/) - After a lifetime of bus rides to the US to visit his children, Julián quietly starts building a house in rural Mexico. In filming his work, his granddaughter crafts a personal and poetic love letter to him and his homeland. - edited, written and co-produced by Isidore Bethel / directed, written, photographed, and produced by Iliana
- [Comemos la tierra / La tierra nos come - 2016](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/comemos-la-tierra-la-tierra-nos-come-2017/) - Bonn Videonale. Through choreography and monologue, the film explores webs of deceit in a quarry and landfill site outside Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl.
- [A Story - 2005](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/a_story/) - Los Angeles Film Festival. A stop-motion animation about a struggle between a key lime and a typewriter.
- [We Died and Here We Are - 2016](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/we_died/) - Beirut Art Center. In West Beqaa, filmmaker Mohamad Kanaan buries a car belonging to an uncle whose death he'd never mourned.
- [Someone I Love or Someone Who I Want to Be - 2011](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/someone_i_love/) - Harvard Hoopes Prize. Encounters between a poet, a vocalist, and a composer generate a fictional script about intimate and fraught relationships.
- [The Poem Itself - 2009](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/the_poem_itself/) - Chalton Gallery (London). Four people recall their experiences with a poem that the filmmaker has destroyed.
- [Up-Set - 2008](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/up-set/) - Short Circuit Traveling Film Festival. A stop-motion animation about the Egyptian deities Osiris and Isis.
- [](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/feedback-sessions/) - Consulting Sessions I’m available for feedback sessions with filmmakers (professional or otherwise) and students who are Black, Indigenous, or People of Color, who are neurodiverse, D/deaf, blind/low vision, or disabled, who are lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans, nonbinary, or queer, or who belong to any groups that institutions, authorities, or others have disenfranchised. These sessions
- [Towards a More Moving Image - 2008](https://isidorebethel.com/projects/towards_a_more_moving_image/) - Harvard College’s Sert Gallery. Three-channel video incorporating surveillance, reenactment, and a fiction script about convincingly imitating human behavior.

## Pages

- [[:en]ABOUT[:es]ACERCA[:fr]À PROPOS[:]](https://isidorebethel.com/about/) - Isidore Bethel is a filmmaker and educator. His directorial debut Liam received the Paris LGBTQ+ Film Festival’s Jury Prize and is streaming on Tënk. His second film as director Acts of Love premiered at Hot Docs, appeared on MovieWeb’s list of the year’s top LGBTQ+ films, and is streaming on Here TV, Canal+, and
- [[:en]LINKS[:es]L[:fr]L[:]](https://isidorebethel.com/links-2/) - https://dupla.mx/ https://isidorebethel.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/links.pdf
- [[:en]CONTACT[:es]CONTACTO[:fr]CONTACT[:]](https://isidorebethel.com/contact/)
- [HOME](https://isidorebethel.com/home/) - Isidore Bethel is a filmmaker and educator. His work has screened at Cannes, at the Museum of Modern Art, and on Netflix.

## Categories

- [FILMS](https://isidorebethel.com/category/projects/)
- [Director](https://isidorebethel.com/category/projects/director/)
- [Editor](https://isidorebethel.com/category/projects/editor/)
- [Producer](https://isidorebethel.com/category/projects/producer/)

## Tags

- [Feature](https://isidorebethel.com/tag/feature/)
- [Short](https://isidorebethel.com/tag/short/)