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 various forms such as 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 the relationship with time and death.

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