‘Olga’ Filmmaker Elie Grappe Inks With CAA

EXCLUSIVE: Elie Grappe, the French writer-director whose feature directorial debut Olga has been selected as Switzerland’s entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar, has signed with CAA for representation.

Grappe’s film starring Anastasiia Budiashkina follows a 15-year-old Ukrainian gymnast exiled in Switzerland, who is working to secure a place at the country’s National Sports Center. It made its world premiere this year as part of the Critics’s Week section of the Cannes Film Festival, there winning the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers Prize. His debut feature has subsequently traveled to a number of other international festivals, where it has picked up additional awards.

Grappe studied classical music at the Lyon National Conservatory for 10 years, then studying cinema at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne. As part of the curriculum, he directed the film Répétition and his graduation short film, Suspendu, seeing both selected by a variety of international festivals.

Grappe continues to be represented in France by Time Art.