Born in Taiwan and raised across London, the Philippines, Switzerland, and Berlin, Jean-Michel Brawand is a Swiss-Filipino filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist whose films blend documentary realism with impressionistic storytelling. He studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins, specializing in painting and video, and has since presented his works in festivals and galleries worldwide.

His aesthetic is deeply personal, weaving together home movie footage, family photographs, diary entries, and appropriated images to construct a unique visual language. A believer in film as a window on the world, his methodology draws from anthropology, psychoanalysis, and long-take realism, working with both professional and non-professional actors to evoke raw, layered performances. Now based in Berlin, he has lectured on film history and visual archaeology, an led workshops on guerrilla filmmaking. His films examine identity, redemption, and the mystical in everyday life, employing a polyphonic approach that challenges audience allegiances and expectations.

Jean-Michel’s journey into filmmaking began at age seven, when he borrowed his father’s hi-8 camcorder to shoot crime stories with his brother and friends. His father had filmed much of his and his brother’s childhood from birth onward, while his mother documented their lives through her analogue camera. Moreover, he is also the grandson of the acclaimed Filipino filmmaker and screenwriter Chito B. Tapawan. These three figures not only shaped his artistic sensibility but also presented contrasting styles that he sought to reconcile. More importantly, his parents’ material instilled him the notion that life, in its raw form, could be beautiful, and may also be the very substance of art.

While at university, he became disillusioned with the reverence some classmates and professors spoke of directors, as if they existed in some unattainable sphere. This frustration led him to employ a more diy, journalistic approach to filmmaking, prioritizing real moments and emotion over professionally sound but hollow images. He began organising filmed acting and improvisation sessions, which he called ‘The Blake House workshops’, drawing inspiration from Stanislavski and Cassavets, with an emphasis on authentic performances. Over time, he realised that the more participants engaged in these exercises, the more they revealed themselves not just as actors, but as people. As a result, his work took on a theological dimension, whose aim was document the complexities of the human soul both in documentary and fiction.