Ursula Meier

A native of Besançon, the capital of the Franche-Comté region in eastern France, near the Swiss border, Ursula Meier graduated from Belgium's Institut des Arts de Diffusion [Institute of Visual Arts] and served as assistant director to the Swiss auteur, Alain Tanner, on his films Fourbi (Gear) (1996) and Jonas et Lila, à demain (Jonas and Lila, 'Till Tomorrow) (1999).

She won her first major film award for the 1998 short, Des heures sans sommeil (Sleepless), which received the Special Jury Prize at the Festival International du Court-Métrage de Clermont-Ferrand as well as the International Grand Prize at the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival and a Best Short Fiction Film nomination at the Molodist International Film Festival in Kyiv. In 2002, her film Tous à table (Table Manners), which had already won the Audience Award and the Press Award at the 2001 Clermont-Ferrand Festival, as well as the Best French-Language Short Film award at the 2001 Créteil International Women's Film Festival, received a Swiss Film Prize nomination for Best Short Film.

In 2003, Ursula Meier served as a member of the jury at the Brest European Short Film Festival and won the Cinema Prize – Feature Film award at Portugal's Avanca Film Festival as well as a nomination for the Swiss Film Prize as best feature film for her made-for-TV movie, Strong Shoulders. In April, with the selection of Strong Shoulders for New York City's New Directors/New Films Festival at the Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center, she made the journey to introduce the film and participate in question-and-answer sessions.

Six years later, Home was also selected for New Directors/New Films and, in April 2009, she once again made appearances at the Museum of Modern Art and The Walter Reade Theatre, introducing the New York premiere of the film. The film had premiered as a special screening in the Critics' Week section at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008.

Her 2012 film L'enfant d'en haut premiered in competition at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Special Award - Silver Bear. It has also been selected as the Swiss entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, making the January shortlist.

In 2013 she was a member of the jury at the 35th Moscow International Film Festival.

She took part in the collective film Bridges of Sarajevo, together with twelve other renowned directors. The film premiered within the Special Screenings at Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

In 2018, she was the president of the Jury for the Caméra d'Or, the award for the best first feature at Cannes Film Festival, and was the Godmother of the Locarno International Film Festival's signing the SWAN pledge 5050x2020.

The Line (La Ligne), her next feature, premiered again in the competition at Berlin Film Festival in 2022.