Francesco Thérèse was born in Rome in 1981. He grew up between the cultural influences of his Italian mother and Mauritian father. He studied cinema in Rome and began working on film sets at a very young age. Dividing his time between art and film, writing and visual work, he became an assistant director, directed short films, and created installations. In 2019, driven by the desire to convey emotions that enrich the viewer’s experience rather than deliver messages, he directed BLUE, an experimental short film that became the first chapter in a trilogy exploring the relationship between human beings and the laws that govern the cosmos. With Symphony of Pines and Pots, he won the 2019 Pigneto Film Festival / Karawan Festival award, responding to a call from both festivals. This was his second video art piece, in which he placed a theremin in front of passersby, inviting them to play it, ultimately creating a spontaneous symphony: the “Symphony of Pines and Pots,” as the title suggests. During the COVID lockdown, he created IN | there, a video art piece that explored the connection between the forced human condition of that moment and the equally constrained experience of astronauts in space. IN | there featured contributions by photographer Natalino Russo. In 2021, he created Re: BLUE, an immersive installation produced by SNAPORAZVEREIN, continuing his exploration of the cosmic dialogue initiated in BLUE. With Re: BLUE, he sought to go further by completely abandoning narrative, feeding instead on diverse spaces and a new mode of offering: not to viewers, but to participants. To the images, words, and music of the short film, he added lights, sounds, space, and interaction, transforming the cinematic experience into an active, performative environment in which viewers were free to move through the scenographic space as they wished. Also in 2021, he worked on Visual HAIKU, a video art interpretation of the century-old Japanese poetic form, which was exhibited in the gardens of Palazzo Brancaccio in a dual show with Japanese artist Hiromi Suzuki. In 2023, he directed The Twins Eternalism, co-produced with 8 Production, the second episode of the trilogy started with BLUE, focusing on one of the many characters introduced in the original short. In 2025, he directed Yellow Liminal, again co-produced with 8 Production, continuing within the narrative universe of Le Gemelle Eternalismo, and using both AI and celluloid film to express the emotional multiplicity of the protagonist.

Francesco Thérèse’s gaze is humanitarian: it doesn’t indulge in pity, but rather is traversed by an outlook that recognizes and restores dignity to every human being. He is currently in pre-production on his first narrative feature film, an international co-production with the working title The Universal. This film aims to be the artistic manifesto of his idea of cinema: the sublimation of all arts, coexisting in perfect balance, where the weight of story, mise-en-scène, performance, and sound/music is equally distributed. Because the film is not about something: the film is.

Director Statement

Yellow Liminal was born from the desire to bring together distant universes, a recurring thread in my previous work. In this case, two twin sisters are separated by the vastness between Earth and the Cosmos: one remains on Earth, the other is on a space mission. They are also separated by time: Ruth, the protagonist, has aged as all of us do here on Earth, while her twin sister is in space, on a mission near a black hole, where time flows differently and aging slows down. Just as distant are the styles I’ve chosen to bring together in this film: AI and celluloid film, two expressive languages at opposite ends of the spectrum, representing the different existences and essences of the two sisters. Shooting on film, while deeply fascinating, involved greater risks and a much narrower margin for error than digital. Yet shooting digitally would have felt like a shortcut — a safety net that would have kept Yellow Liminal from reaching its full cinematic potential. At the same time, I loved working with AI, especially now that it has forcefully entered our lives. I wanted the entire first part of the film to be built upon this tool. The use of AI to create the liminal imagery and the sound design that simulates the progressive aging of Ruth’s voice were not conceived as mere technical aids, but as essential narrative elements. These elements do not simply support the story, they tell it. They are an integral part of the film’s visual and sonic identity, actively contributing to its emotional and poetic universe.