NOUVELLE BUG

Andrea Gatopoulos is an Italian and Greek director, producer, and distributor. A member of EFA, Berlinale Talents, Locarno Spring Academy, and TFL, he studied in workshops with W. Herzog, Radu Jude, and A. Weerasethakul. His films deal with virtual realities, disturbing valleys, anti-capitalism, and critiques of progressivism. “Happy New Year, Jim” (2022) was the first machinima film at Cannes, at the 54th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs. In 2023, he presented “Eschaton Ad”, a film about the apocalyptic advent of AI, at Locarno. Later that year, he presented *“A stranger quest”* (2023), his first feature-length documentary about maps, at the Torino Film Festival. In 2024, his short film “The Eggregores’ Theory” opened the 39th Critics’ Week in Venice as the first AI film in Venice and was nominated for the EFA by ZINEBI and the 70th David di Donatello Awards, winning a special Nastro D’Argento for experimentation.

Gala Hernández López is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher. Her interdisciplinary practice ranges from film production to video installations, performances, and publications, using these media as avenues for epistemological inquiry. Her work explores new forms of subjectivity shaped by computational capitalism. Her film La Mécanique des fluides (2022) is the first in a trilogy of films that reflects on processes of individuation in relation to algorithms and digital flows of data and capital. It won the César Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024. “Here I am sitting in a Tin Can” had its world premiere at the Berlinale – Forum Expanded in February 2024, and “+10k” was presented at the Quinzaine des Cineastes in Cannes in 2025.

Total Refusal is a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games. We upcycle video games in order to reveal the political apparatus beyond the glossy and hyperreal textures of this media. Their films have been selected in many festivals including Berlinale and Locarno and their artistic research has been featured worldwide in museums and art fairs. With “Hardly Working”, which premiered in Locarno, they won the European Film Award for Best Short  Film.

Ismaël is a filmmaker and artist who trained at Le Fresnoy and whose student films were screened in many festivals. A graduate of INSAS, LUCA School of Arts, and Le Fresnoy, He exhibits his work in major institutions, like Centre Pompidou in Paris, Pearl Art Museum in Shanghai and in the most prestigious festivals, from Venice Biennale to Cannes, Annecy, IDFA. Since 2022, Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis has been an associate artist at Centquatre-Paris. With Maalbeek, selected for the 59th edition of La Semaine de la Critique, he went further in his investigation of how identity, technology and the virtual world interact, by piecing together the images and sounds of the fragmented, traumatic memory of a victim of the 2015 Brussels terrorist attacks. He won the César 2022 for best Short Documentary. 

Graduated in Philosophy, Francesco D’Isa is the author of essays and novels published by Hoepli, effequ, Tunué, Newton Compton, and Edizioni Tlon. Over the years, he has gained extensive experience as a theorist and popularizer in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and creativity, as well as a digital artist. His artistic work stands out for its highly distinctive aesthetics, the result of exceptional skill in prompt writing and generating images and figures whose unique style is often the outcome of errors deliberately guided by D’Isa himself.
Recently, he published the illustrated “philosophy novel” Sunyata (Eris Edizioni) and The Algorithmic Revolution of Images (Sossella Editore, 2024). Editorial director of the cultural magazine L’Indiscreto, D’Isa writes and draws for various Italian and international magazines. His works are increasingly exhibited in shows both in Italy and abroad. He is currently a Philosophy professor at the Lorenzo de’ Medici Institute (Florence) and teaches Illustration and Contemporary Plastic Techniques at LABA Brescia. Francesco will hold a workshop on Artificial Intelligence Aesthetic for the participants of Nouvelle Bug vol. 5.