Nathalie David, born in France, studied fine arts at the Villa Arson in Nice and the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, with subsequent additional studies at Pontus Hultén's Institut des Hautes Études in Paris and a fellowship at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen Potsdam-Babelsberg. She sees the documentary perspective as a genre and a specific art process. Her work includes films, radio plays, photographs, and drawings. She lives and works in Hamburg and Berlin.
 
Nathalie David's project is a film about the poet, collector, architect, and patron of the arts Edward James, who lived in Los Angeles from 1940 to 1962 (from 1946 mostly as a visitor). There he was friends with, among others, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Ruth Ford, and Jack Larson, but he also socialized with Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Igor Stravinsky. In 1946 he moved to Mexico, where he spent 30 years building a unique ensemble of Surrealist architecture in collaboration with the indigenous population. The unrecognized grandson of Edward VII, he built the largest private collection of Surrealist art, beginning in 1933. Without his patronage, Surrealism would not have achieved the prominence it has today.

Selected Filmography
2022 | Video clip for “Ballade vom Sprayer” (Sophie Hunger)
2021 | Harald Naegeli – Der Sprayer von Zürich
2020 | Elias Crespin – L'Onde du Midi, with Valery Faidherbe, Musée du Louvre
 
Selected Prizes and Awards
2022 | Nominated for German Documentary Film Award for Harald Naegeli – Der Sprayer von Zürich
2021 | Nominated for Sichtwechsel Award at Filmfest Hamburg for Harald Naegeli – Der Sprayer von Zürich
2017 | Artist in Residence, Goethe-Institut, Porto Alegre, Brazil