Iván Noel is a French/Argentine producer and director, known for They Returned, En tu Ausencia and ¡Primaria!. In their July, 2009 journal, Camilo José Cela University compared his works to that of Truffaut and Comencini. He originally started in the arts by writing and performing his own musical compositions. The transition from music to film came from his love for combining and juxtaposing the two art forms in order to make something greater than the two by themselves. Since those first small scenes, he has gone on to release ten feature films and numerous publicities, videoclips and short films. All of the movies, despite their different plots, characters, and other thematic elements, share the commonality of confronting moral issues without yielding to the conventions of political correctness.
Early life
Noel was born in 1968 in Beirut. His mother was Australian and his father was of French and British descent. He is fluently triligual. His family was well-to-do but "nomadic resulting in him attending 8 different schools in as many countries. He has a BA in music and education from the University of York, specializing in soundtrack composition, having studied amongst others with Wilfred Josephs. and began his career as professor in the field of music, composing and giving concerts as a solo classical guitarist and piano accompanist in Paris.
Film making
Noel entered the audiovisual world first through the production of short films. He won important prizes in Europe both for his photography, but also his compositions. About that film he said he is in debt to the realism of director Ken Loach. This film was shot between Jerez and the Sierra de Cádiz. It was a low budget production made with unknown actors, but it woke the interest of critics. The film was featured in several festivals, including Vancouver, Palm Springs, Chicago, Bahamas, Athens, etc. In Vancouver the film finished fifth out of more than 200 films. Vanguard International Cinema distributed the film in North America. The film has not been released or distributed in Spain. For the next project, the director moved to a town of Seville, Lebrija. He lived there for a year to study the local people so that cast them correctly. For funding, Noel, lacking a budget, raised the money through donations. He arranged free rentals of shooting locations and the actors volunteered to work for free. It was recorded during the summer of 2008, and was released in 2009 with the title of Gap later to be changed to Brecha. It opened to small premieres in Spain, and was received with praise by its audiences. In 2010 he released ¡Primaria!, his third feature film. He shot it in the school San Francisco de Paula in Seville. He spent a year there teaching the children art. Since it was the first time in film making history that the same teacher of the children was also their director in a film, Noel believed that this would increase the naturalness in the representation of scenes by the child actors, creating a very favorable context to get real emotions and situations experienced. In this sense, Noel likes to say this film is "a story with children where nothing is invented, even the most unlikely thing." Noel defines the film as "a comedy about the bowels of the primary starring three students, Jose Joaquin, Carlos and Carmen." The film also portrays the life of the faculty, focusing mainly on three of them. Noel manages to convey the personal lives of these teachers beyond their work without reaching the use of narration. With Vuelve, commercially released in 2012, Noel moves into the horror genre. Filmed in Argentina, it is about a boy who loses his mother under strange circumstances. She communicates with him from beyond the grave, seeking a reunion. The film premiered on October 12, 2011 at the Festival of Unusual Cinema of Buenos Aires. His next project, Limbo was released in 2013. One reviewer noted: They Returned turns on the strange disappearance of three children from their small town, and their reappearance three days later in a strange state. When asked about how he responds to the controversy surrounding his films he said: Ivan Noel runs the film production company Noel Films, who, aside from the feature films listed below, have produced a dozen commercials and as many videoclips, including one for the Icelandic group Sigur Ros.
