Le Spectateur zéro: Conversation sur le montage (The Spectator Zero: A Conversation About Film Editing), co-written by Julien Suaudeau, lecturer in French and Francophone Studies and director of Film Studies, recently received the 2020 Best French Book on Film award from the Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma. Suaudeau co-wrote the book with the film editor Yann Dedet.
As a filmmaker, Suaudeau has directed documentaries and short fiction films, and has published extensively on film history, film theory, and French cinema in Positif.
In addition to writing about film, Suaudeau is the author of four novels: Dawa (2014), Le Français (2015), Ni le feu ni la foudre (2016), and Le Sang noir des hommes (2019). His fiction work focuses on contemporary France seen through the lenses of colonial and postcolonial history, immigration, laïcité, terrorism, and socioeconomic inequalities. His books explore the blind spots of the Great French Narrative, in search of repressed voices and counter-accounts.