Born in 1970, Julien Sicard worked as a producer. He produced the first short film directed by the actor Jean-Christophe Bouvet (Les dents de ma mère / My Mothre’s Jaw, 1991), the first documentary by Nils Tavernier (Drogue dis-leur, 1992) and the first music video by Julien Séri (Laurent Voulzy / Never More, 1993). In 1995, he produced a feature film with the director Jean-Claude Biette (“Le Complexe de Toulon”, winner of the Best Director award at the Dunkerque Film Festival) and then focused his attention on a more activist production style. In 1997, he founded an association, Les Engraineurs, with a schoolteacher, and produced around twenty short films written in workshops by teenagers from the working-class suburbs of Paris.
He also directed a few films originating in the workshop, notably “Des Terres Minées” (Zone Sensible, 2006), a medium-length film written by 22 teenagers (France 2 Prize at the International Brest Short Film Festival). In 2010, he directed a film for TV, Des Intégrations Ordinaires, co-written with novelist Faïza Guène and screenwriter Catherine Tullat.
“Saïd’s cremation” (Le Bûcher de Saïd) is his tenth film as a director.