Composer Agnès Olier, Paris Philharmonic’s Mathilde Michel join Arte France

Agnès Olier (left) and Mathilde Michel

Cultural broadcaster Arte France has shaken up its commissioning team ahead of director of fiction Olivier Wotling’s move into production at the end of June.

Wotling will step down on June 30 to join a “major production group,” according to Arte France, which has subsequently appointed composer Agnès Olier to the role.

Olier will join Arte on June 18 and work with Alexandre Piel, who has been the fiction department’s deputy director since 2013.

Composer of the soundtracks to films such as The Lady in the Car with Glasses & a Gun, Olier has spent the past five years on the editorial committee of Arte France’s fiction department.

Mathilde Michel, meanwhile, has been appointed director of the arts and entertainment unit at Arte France, with editorial director Boris Razon and production and acquisitions director Ingrid Libercier in temporary charge until Michel’s arrival in July.

Michel spent seven years at Bossard-Gemini Consulting in media strategy before joining France Télévisions in 2005, where she spent more than a decade in roles including general secretary of programmes and directed its Culturebox strand. In 2018, she joined the Paris Philharmonic.

Both Olier and Michel will be responsible for defining the editorial strategy of their respective units and managing their teams.

Wotling joined Arte France in 2015 from the Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée (CNC), where he was director of cinema.

Wotling previously worked as an audiovisual counsellor at the French embassies in Sofia, Budapest and Rome during the 1990s, before joining CNC in 2000, initially as the group’s director of European affairs.

Bruno Patino, president of Arte, and Razon, said in a joint statement they are “keen to warmly thank Olivier Wotling for his inspired work, his finesse and his commitment in favour of creation.”