Julia Riedler

It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform one man into a national sensation and iconic fairy-tale character. His name: Petrus Gonsalvus, more commonly known today as the hairy hero of Beauty and the Beast.

Traveling through the abyss, underworld dog Rainer recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages. From her childhood, a slave of Sanja and her barbarian horde, to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world.

Luz, a young cabdriver, drags herself into the brightly lit entrance of a run-down police station. A demonic entity follows her, determined to finally be close to the woman it loves.

Weimar, 1921. The life of 20-year-old Lotte Brendel seems to be predetermined. Her father sees her as a future wife and mother on the side of a man who is to take over the parental carpentry business. But the idiosyncratic Lotte joins a group of young artists against the will of her family, applies at the Bauhaus and is accepted. The Weimar Bauhaus, under the direction of the visionary Walter Gropius, aspires not only to combine arts and crafts, but also to find the place for the "New Man". In the student Paul Seligmann Lotte finds a supporter and her great love.

Dragon Dilatation is the union of two filmic essays, Petrouchka and La Déviante Comédie. The first part is a rereading of Stravinsky’s ballet, while the second segment is made up of traces of an unpublished performance rehearsed at the Théâtre des Amandiers.

A pop satire. A teleshopping show that uses the fear of climate apocalypse as a reason to convince the audience to consume more and more. A film about consumerism and climate crisis, about global warming and individualism, about hedonism and guilty conscience, about the contradictions inside of us. A reflexion about the way we look away and an exposure of the cynicism of a capitalistic system. “A great many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke (“more signs of the Apocalypse!”). Which is another way of looking away.”

While creating SHE IS CONANN, Bertrand Mandico also filmed two short films simultaneously to create an entire "Barbarian Cycle" that brings you deeper into the world that Mandico has created. Presented in this program are: Rainer, A Vicious Dog in a Skull Valley (26min); Apocalypse After (35min); and We Barbarians (27min).