Leïla Macaire is a french director and photographer living in Paris. Self-taught in photography, this visual language allows her to express her personal interrogations about the world. Identity and social diversity are two themes recurring most presently in her work resulting to her youth in a multi-ethnic area. She uses to alternate between documentary and fiction in her work. These two approaches allow her to explore her interest for reality and aesthetic research.

Since she graduated in filmmaking from l’École de la Cité, she shot various short movies that are still broadcast and awarded in many festivals (France, Tokyo, Montreal, Los Angeles, New York…). Since 2018, she has been working on her first feature film Des vies dansent (Lives evidently dancing). Shot with children from four countries, this documentary praises an international body language to reconnect people together and with nature. She also made pictures while travelling and meeting the children. In 2019, she developed her first series named Noire et Blanche (Black and White girls) that questioned the pictural and social terms of “black” and “white.” With these pictures, she tried to encourage the idea of diversity. In 2020, she released Envolé (Flown away) in Morocco, a series about the mysterious relationship she has with the memory of her father. This work has been elected “coup de coeur” by Fisheye Magazine in 2019. More recently, one of her photos from the lockdown period was exhibited at ICP / International Center of Photography of New York. These pictures are following two children and reflect on the idea of a locked energy.