During his law studies, Yanis Koussim, born in 1977, decided to become a filmmaker. After a brief stint by la FEMIS, he shot the short film Khti(my sister), then Khouya(my brother). Khouya(my brother), acclaimed by the critics in Algeria, won awards in Locarno, Amiens and Corte, and was selected in the international competition at the International Short Film Festival of Clermont-Ferrand.

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In 2012, Yanis took part to the documentary project A summer in Algiers, with the videos of La nuit, which was premiered at Le palais de Tokyo in Paris.

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Yanis is also a screenwriter, he wrote all his films and collaborate on the scripts of A mon age je me cache encore pour fumer, by Rayhana Obermayer and Algérie mon amour, by Lotfi Bouchouchi.

For télévision, Yanis directed Ammi Achour, and wrote scripts for Ness m'lah city, Casbah city and Dar droj. 

 

Yanis lives between Algiers and Sétif, where he creates Plateau19, an Algerian independent cinema workers collective, to improve the independent entrepreneurship in the Algerian cinema field. He is working on several feature film projects including Roqia, a horror movie. Algiers by night, still in post-production is his first feature film.