After studying humanities and filmmaking at the Sorbonne, Matthieu Belghiti began working as an intern on a range of feature-length fiction films and eventually worked his way up to being a production manager for a range of different film companies. In 2000, he became a producer of shorts, documentaries and features for Little Bear, owned by Bertrand Tavernier and Frédéric Bourboulon. There, he produced over 20 films that were broadcast in many countries, some of which won awards at the main international film festivals. In 2004, he joined Maha Productions and produced a dozen or so films a year for them. Either single movies or series, these were mainly documentaries and his work there won him the Best French Producer award in 2009.

In 2008, he created What’s Up films.

He is a member of the EURODOC, USPA and C7 networks.

He is occasionally involved in a range of training sessions and participates on funding councils (Régions, CNC, PROCIREP, Média).

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade studied law and journalism. In 1987, he created the Tribulations press agency. He produced news magazines and started to make his first documentaries for TV. In 1990, he concentrated on those themes that fascinated him: society and its taboos. Sexual violence, madness, death, exclusions, and legal injustices became the central topics in his films. Between 1993 and 1998, he made Viols et Châtiments, La Cavale des Innocents, L’Inceste Face à la Justice and Une Australie Blanche et Pure. This last film, which explored the first genocide of the 20th century against Aboriginals in Australia, won the FIPA d’Or at the Biarritz Festival. In 1999, along with Denis Poncet, he created Maha Productions. Together, they produced many documentaries and documentary series and he continued to make films exploring his view of justice, such as La Justice des Hommes (which won the Prix Albert Londres) and Murder on a Sunday Morning, which was a resounding success. Screened in more than 30 countries, it won an Oscar in March 2002. He continued with The Staircase or Suspicions (8×45’), which won three prestigious awards in the USA: the IDA Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Peabody Award. He also made a feature-length fiction film, Welcome Home, and Parcours Meurtrier d’une Mère Ordinaire for France 3, a docu-fiction about the Véronique Courjault case. On 1 June 2011, he was elected president of the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimédia (SCAM). He joined What’s Up films in 2011 with the desire to continue working as producer and scouting for new talent, in addition to making his own movies.

Pierre Carrique began his career as a director and location manager where he gained a great deal of experience in the field working on shoots in France and abroad. He became production manager on documentaries for TV and cinema such as Tout Près des Étoiles by Nils Tavernier, before joining Little Bear where he met Matthieu Belghiti. Over a period of five years, they produced around 20 documentaries and shorts. After this, Pierre started working again as a production manager and unit production manager with several different companies such as Bonne Pioche and Maha Productions. It was his desire to get involved with projects from the outset, a need to be independent and a taste for adventure that led him to create What’s Up films in 2008 with Matthieu.

David Vincent cut his teeth organizing concerts, shows and artistic residencies at La Clef/l’Eclipse. He developed a taste for the avant-garde, and put together, accessorized, lit, administered and coproduced the theatrical creations of Planète Tuh’n-TNT, creating some spectacular productions from les Frigos du Quai de la Gare to the Panthéon. Always on the look-out for new universes to explore, he juggled a range of projects – working on shorts, features, TV movies, ads and music videos from Le Passage du Havre to the Piton de la Fournaise, working with companies like Movimento, Première Heure, Nord-Ouest Productions, Les Films du Losange, Pierre Grise and MC4. What’s Up films has introduced him to the world of documentaries, and David is now writing a major book exploring the extraordinary nature of human complexity.

Graduate with two Masters in communication studies, Alexane started her career in Canada as a Press Officer in the film industry. An activity that she pursued after her return in France in 2018, during the Cannes Film Festival. The same year, Alexane joined the production company Vixens as production coordinator. She participated in the implementation of financing strategies for several short and feature films including documentaries. She joined What’s Up Films in December 2020.

It was at What’s Up, as a production intern, that Elodie finished her studies in Cultural and Creative Industries. Particularly interested in documentaries, she did a quick spin in a reportage production company before coming back to What’s Up as a production assistant in 2022.