Karim Kari is not a filmmaker who came to cinema through film school or industry conventions—he emerged from the living, breathing heart of theatre itself. Born on May 6, 1965, in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges and now based in Paris, Kari carries with him over four decades of deep-rooted experience in theatrical production and stage management.
For nearly 40 years, he has worked behind the scenes—shaping performances, managing productions, and witnessing the evolution (and gradual erosion) of theatre from within. His role as General Stage Manager at the Comédie des Champs-Élysées further anchors him in one of France’s most iconic cultural spaces, giving him an intimate understanding of both the grandeur and fragility of the stage.
What makes Kari distinct is his approach to creation. He describes his work as an urgent act—bringing together professional and non-professional actors without traditional casting or rehearsals, capturing what he calls “poetic scars in the moment.” This philosophy reflects a raw, almost instinctive form of filmmaking, where emotion is not constructed but discovered.
A self-taught director, Kari’s transition into cinema feels less like a shift and more like an extension of theatre—his films carry the same immediacy, the same vulnerability, and the same obsession with presence. His works, including Forever (2025), exist in a space between performance and reality, where bodies, silence, and space become the primary language.
Karim Kari is, at his core, an observer of disappearance—an artist documenting what fades, not with resistance, but with reverence. His cinema does not try to save theatre; it preserves its soul in fragments, in shadows, in fleeting human moments.
And perhaps that is what defines him most—not just a director, but a witness to an art form slowly slipping into memory.