Bruno Podalydès

“Ulti­mate­ly, when you make a film you want to make peo­ple dream, accu­ra­cy isn’t enough. It’s about mak­ing things more intense.”

Bruno Poda­ly­dès direct­ed in 1992 his first short film, acclaimed Ver­sailles rive gauche, which won sev­er­al awards, includ­ing the Audi­ence Award at the Cler­mont-Fer­rand Short Film Fes­ti­val and the Cesar Award for Best Short Film in 1993. The fol­low­ing year, he shot Voilà, award­ed at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val. In 1998, with his broth­er Denis’ com­plic­i­ty, he made his first fea­ture film Dieu seul me voit (Ver­sailles-Chantiers), a com­e­dy that won the Cesar Award for Best First Fea­ture Film. Writer of all his screen­plays, he cosigned in 2001 with his broth­er a new opus, Lib­erté-Oléron, and its sequel Granny’s Funer­al ten years lat­er, select­ed at 2012 Direc­tors’ Fort­night. In 2003, he adapt­ed a detec­tive nov­el by Gas­ton Ler­oux: The Mys­tery of the Yel­low Cham­ber with a lot of actors he met again in 2005 in a sec­ond adap­ta­tion, The Per­fume of the Lady in Black. He then direct­ed Bancs Publics (Ver­sailles Rive-Droite) (2009), The Sweet Escape (2015), and Bécas­sine! (2019). He is also an actor and starred in all his own films, but also worked for oth­er direc­tors, such as Claire Denis in Let the Sun Shines In (2017) and Jeanne Her­ry in In Safe Hands (2018).