Bertrand Mandico

Bertrand Mandico is a French film director and screenwriter whose body of work has become synonymous with a daring exploration of gender fluidity, bodily transformation, and surreal narrative structures. Born on 21 March 1971 in Toulouse, France, he honed his craft at the prestigious Gobelins school in Paris, graduating from the film directing program before embarking on a prolific career that began in 1997 and continues to the present day. The Wild Boys (2017), his breakout feature, was hailed by Cahiers du cinéma as the top film of 2018 and earned him the Best Director award at the Vilnius International Film Festival, cementing his reputation for crafting visually arresting, gender‑bending cinema. Mandico’s methodology is unusually meticulous: he records all audio in post‑production, inviting actors to post‑synchronize their performances while he layers environmental sounds and music, yet he insists on shooting on colour film with no digital image manipulation, relying on in‑camera projection and superimposition to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. In 2012 he co‑authored the Incoherence Manifesto with Icelandic filmmaker Katrín Ólafsdóttir, a declaration that celebrates “faith in cinema” and an “unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike” approach, ideas that have inspired a younger generation of auteurs such as Yann Gonzalez and Caroline Poggi. His collaborative “20+1 Projections” project with actress Elina Löwensohn aims to produce twenty‑one short films over twenty‑one years, each probing themes of aging and desire, with eight films shot and six completed by 2018. Recent works include After Blue (2021) and She Is Conann (2023), and he is slated to direct Dragon Dilatation (2024) followed by the high‑profile Roma elastica starring Marion Cotillard, set to begin filming in 2025. Throughout his career, Mandico has directed over forty short films, commercials, and musical videos, continuously pushing the boundaries of cinematic language while maintaining a steadfast commitment to the tactile, analog roots of the medium.