Yaël Bitton
Yaël Bitton
Documentary Skills
Editing Methods and Aesthetics
Guest Lecturer (2021-2022)
Yaël Bitton is a documentary film editor, writer, story consultant, and director.
She was born in Geneva, lived and worked in New York, Brussels, Spain, Israel, Switzerland, and currently is based in Paris.
Yaël has been working as an editing tutor at the HEAD/Cinéma du Réel in Geneva since 2008.
Additionally, she works as mentor, editing and story consultant independently, as well as for Rough Cut Service, Media Talents Lab, Dok Incubator, Doc Montevideo, Circle, Visions du Réel, Ex Oriente, Doc Aviv, and Doc Point. She also has participated as a tutor at Greenhouse, Femis, Cinédoc and NYU.
Yaël graduated in film directing at INSAS film school in Brussels (1995). From 1995 to 1999 she worked as a script supervisor on various feature films in the USA, including ‘Lisbon story’ by Wim Wenders, ‘Girlfight’ by Karin Kusama, ‘Hamlet’ by Michael Almereyda, and many more.
Amidst her recent editorial credits are: ‘Hijos del Viento’ by Felipe Monroy (2021); ‘The Edge of Democracy’ by Petra Costa (2019); ‘Machines’ by Rahul Jain (2016), MOMA’s Doc Fortnight opening film and winner of the 2017 Sundance Cinematography award in the World Documentary Competition and the Special Jury, Human Value and FIPRESCI awards at the Thessaloniki Documentary film festival; ‘Forget History’ by Anat Even (2016); ‘The Wonderful Kingdom of Papa Alaev’ by Noam Pinchas and Tal Barda (2015).
She won the Sima editing award for Radio Silence by Juliana Fanjul, and the Best editing at Israel documentary forum for Advocate by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche.
Yaël has directed two feature-length documentaries: ‘Not For Sale’ (2003); ‘The Rabbi‘s 12 Children (2007); as well as various shorter formats for television (ARTE, RTS).
She is also a member of The Oscars Academy in the documentary branch, and was jury member at IDFA in 2018 for the mid-length section.
