Born in 1990, lives and works in Toulouse.

Meryem-Bahia Arfaoui approaches filmmaking like an archivist and oral history teller. She directed her first short feature in 2020. In 2021, she made Les Splendides, a documentary short that won the Jury Prize in ARTE’s Et Pourtant Elles Tournent film competition, and won a screenwriter’s residency at La Ruche Gindou Cinéma.

In 2022, she directed a documentary series with the inhabitants of north Toulouse’s housing projects, produced by Tactikollectif. In 2024, she made Camionneuse, a documentary coproduced by Les Batelieres Productions. Meryem-Bahia is currently writing À la marge, a documentary series that revisits French history from the inner cities through the eyes of immigrants, and Les Coursives, a collection of poetry that chronicles memories of Empalot, the working-class district they come from.