Jean-Noël Gobron (Belgium, 1954) was born in Eeklo, the son of a poet and a painter. In 1962, his family settled in Bruges, where he began experimenting with the Super 8 format at an early age. In 1970, he took a job as a cinema projectionist after school. At the age of seventeen, he left school to work for an industrial photo company. A year later, he returned to university and successively studied photography, plastic arts and film. In 1973, he founded the film club Zoom, and from 1974 onwards he worked in the film industry as a cameraman, contributing to various national and international film productions. He obtained his diploma in film directing from Sint-Lukas in Brussels.

After working on a number of feature films as a director of photography, cameraman, and technician, Gobron directed his first feature film, Satori Stress, during a three-month stay in Tokyo in 1984. Two years later, he founded the production company Alcyon Film. Next to his filmmaking activities, he also taught cinema at KASK (Royal Academy of Fine Arts), as well as at NARAFI and the VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) in Brussels. He currently lives in France.