Cyril Dion


Cyril Dion is a French writer, film director, poet, and activist.

Life and career

After studying at the École d'art dramatique Jean-Périmony and a very brief career as an actor, Cyril Dion coordinated projects for the 'Fondation Hommes de Parole'. He organized an israeli-palestinian congress at Caux in 2003, 2005 and 2006, and the first and second world Congress of Imams and Rabbis for peace in Brussels and Sevilla.
In 2007, he founded with a few friends, the ecological movement Colibris. He was director until July 2013. In 2010, he was advisor and co-producer with Colibris of the movie Think global act Local by Coline Serreau. In 2012, he co-founded Kaizen magazine, and was editor in chief from March 2012 to April 2014. He is also Editor in Chief of the Domaine du Possible collection of the French publisher Actes Sud with Jean-Paul Capitani.
He has written poetry since he was 17 and published in 2014 a collection of poems Assis sur le fil, Table Ronde Editions.
He wrote and co-produced with Mélanie Laurent the documentary film Tomorrow, released in movie theaters in France on December 2, 2015; as well as two books published by Actes Sud in France and translated into English, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean. Tomorrow won the Cesar award for Best Documentary in 2016 and over one million people went to see it in movie theatres in France. It is now released in over 30 countries. It is cited by many French people as the trigger for a new kind of engagement in the course of the following years. For the french newspaper Libération "Cyril Dion succeeds in one hour and fifty-eight minutes, what decades of environmental struggle failed to do: lay the foundations for a" new collective fiction". In the US, the movie was critick's pick of the New York Times and obtained 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In September 2016, he was President of the jury of the documentary movie in Festival Biarritz Amérique latine. In October he was the Godfather of festival Atmosphère with the french singer Camille and the FIFF Campus in Namur.
Between March and June 2017, he is the key proponent of the tour: "the song of Hummingbirds, the call of the world of tomorrow". Seven concerts throughout France brought artists together to perform, he performed with about forty artists including Alain Souchon, Matthieu Chedid, Izia, Dominique A, Albin de la Simone, Arthur H, Zaz, Tryo, Emily Loizeau, Jeanne Cherhal, Bastien Lallemant, Piers Faccini, Gael Faure, Xavier Polycarpe, Sebastien Hoog. Cyril Dion punctuated the performance with poetry readings of his book “Assis sur le fil” and texts from the book “Tomorrow”.
In August 2017, for the start of the academic year, he published his first novel published by Actes Sud: Imago. The book is well received by critics and booksellers. For Libération, "the co-director of the film Tomorrow, delivers a first novel that a fast pitch can serve. However, if he gave himself up to the perilous exercise of the subject three times in a row, he took the side of his four characters, with an uncompromising empathy and a haunting writing.
In May 2018, he publishes “Petit manuel de resistance contemporaine” at Actes Sud. As soon as it was published, the book ranked in the best-selling essays. For Charlotte Bloch in the french weekly magazine L'Express: "Far from being moralistic or utopian, this incisive little book full of ideas is a real breath of fresh air because of its particular approach to modern ecology. Here, we do not beat around the bush, but we ask questions while trying to find practical and constructive answers. "
On December 11, 2018 his second film After Tomorrow was broadcast on France 2 in France and then on RTBF in Belgium and RTS in Switzerland. Commissioned by French Public Service Television, it was meant to accompany the first TV broadcast of Tomorrow. The intention of this 71-minute documentary was to meet people who implemented projects after seeing the documentary Tomorrow. As in his book “Petit Manuel de Résistance Contemporaine”, he develops the thesis that stories play a preponderant role in the evolution of society. "This is the conclusion of After Tomorrow: things change when there are enough people who tell a new story and engage in a non-violent street fight, such as civil rights or women's rights".
On December 18, 2018, he took part in the action L'Affaire du Siècle, launched by four NGOs. Their common goal: take the French State to court for not acting on climate change. In a few days online mobilization beats all the petition records in France and gather 2,17 million signatories.

Filmography