ABOUT

Mathieu Chéreau is a director and photographer from Tours, in the Loire Valley, France. As a child, he discovered a passion for storytelling through piano, writing and drawing. His film studies at the University of Paris 8, and later in the United States at SUNY Oswego, enabled him to complete his short film The Tell-Tale Heart. Inspired by a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, he explores his relationship with time and death.

Upon returning to France, he specialized in directing at ENSAV, a public film school in Toulouse. He developed his sensitivity to image, sound, set and costume design. There, Mathieu Chéreau directed a new dark fantasy tale, When Darkness Comes, that featured in the Short Film Corner catalog at the Cannes Film Festival. In this film, he explores the transition from childhood to adulthood through a mystical and poetic initiation ritual.