Dorothée Myriam Kellou is a French-Algerian journalist, filmmaker, and writer. Working across investigative journalism, documentary filmmaking, literature, sound, and visual arts, she explores suppressed memories, colonial legacies, displacement, and the silences of intergenerational transmission.
She graduated from Sciences Po Lyon and holds a Master's degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she studied as a Fulbright scholar.
Investigative Journalism
In 2016, Kellou exposed Lafarge's dealings in Syria in Le Monde, revealing the cement company's indirect financing of the Islamic State. Her investigation received the TRACE International Prize for Investigative Reporting in Washington, D.C., in 2017.
She has contributed to Le Monde, France 24, ARTE, France Télévisions, France Culture, and Orient XXI.
Films and Sound Works
In 2019, she directed In Mansourah, You Separated Us, a documentary exploring the intimate memory of forced population displacement by the French army during Algeria's War of Independence. Rooted in the story of her father, Malek Kellou, an Algerian filmmaker exiled to Nancy, the film screened at international festivals including IDFA and Visions du Réel. It received the Human Rights Award at FIDADOC in Agadir and the Étoile de la Scam in France.
Continuing this investigation, she created L'Algérie des camps, a documentary podcast series for France Culture, shortlisted for the 2021 Prix Sonore Découverte de la Scam.
In 2025, she produced The Statue of Sergeant Blandan: My Father's Ghost for ARTE Radio, a poetic and political sound investigation into colonial memory, tracing the journey of a statue of a French colonial soldier from Boufarik, Algeria, to Nancy, France.
In 2026, she directed Every Family Is an Archive (Chaque famille est une archive), a creative documentary short developed during her residency at Ateliers Médicis in the Paris suburbs. Working with high school students, she explores inherited, forgotten, and silenced family languages. Combining intimate archives, photography, students' voices, and first-person narration, the film asks how artistic creation can emerge from absence. It was presented in October 2026 as part of the Mediterranean Season, alongside her exhibition Nos langues, lost in migration.
She is also co-founder of Rawiyat, a collective supporting women documentary filmmakers from the Middle East, North Africa, and the diaspora.
Writing
In 2023, she published Nancy-Kabylie (Grasset), a literary essay combining personal narrative, historical investigation, and reflections on exile and transmission. Through her family history, she explores how stories can be passed down despite the ruptures caused by war and displacement.
Published in Algeria by Casbah Éditions in 2024, the book received the 2024 Literary Prize of the Grand Mosque of Paris for Best Essay.
Artistic Installations
In 2025, Kellou conceived The Disorientation Table (La Table de désorientation), a poetic and political counter-monument unveiled in Nancy, France, opposite the statue of Sergeant Blandan, a celebrated figure of the French conquest of Algeria.
Inspired by a passage from Nancy-Kabylie, this public art commission by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy takes the form of a reflective circular metal disc, 1.59 metres in diameter, standing upright. It challenges the heroic monument by bringing forward a counter-history: that of the colonized and their descendants.
Engraved on its surface is a text written by Kellou, translated into Arabic by Algerian poet Lamis Saïdi, and incorporating a passage in Tamazight. Through the story of her father, who encountered the statue as a child in colonial Algeria and again in Nancy after his exile, the installation transforms a legacy of fear and silence into a visible trace. Viewers see their own reflections in the metal and are invited to fill in the gaps of history.
The work was developed collaboratively with the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, the City of Nancy, Susana Gállego-Cuesta, Kenza-Marie Safraoui, Colin Ponthot, Redouan Chetuan, Romain Morieux, apprentices from UIMM Maxéville, ENSAD Nancy, and ANRT Nancy.
In 2026, Kellou began a collaboration with the Bureau des heures invisibles to further develop the project.
Teaching and Public Engagement
Since 2019, Kellou has led lectures, workshops, and public discussions in schools, universities, museums, and cultural institutions across France, the Middle East, and the United States. Her teaching focuses on documentary investigation, sound creation, personal archives, and first-person storytelling.
She has spoken at Georgetown University, Northwestern University, and Sciences Po. Since 2025, she has also led a creative writing workshop, Excavating Memory, Writing Your Story, at Les Mots in Paris.
Awards and Recognition
In 2024, she received the Recanati-Kaplan Prize, awarded by Villa Albertine, the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation, and the Institut du monde arabe, recognizing outstanding cultural projects connected to the Arab world and its diaspora.
