“We can do everything with a drawing”: the brilliant Michel Gondry opens with fanfare the new edition of the Annecy festival

A few hours before the official kick -off of the 2025 edition, the Annecy festival opened up with an exceptional cinema lesson delivered by Michel Gondry. The French director is present this year in time as an invited to honor, but also to reveal his brand new animated film Maya, give me another title.

The general public is more aware of Michel Gondry's work in the cinema in real shots: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be nice, Rembobinez, L’Écume des Jours or the Book of Solutions with Pierre Niney.

The animation was however used on certain clips of the filmmaker-notably Fell in love with a girl of the White Stripes and Like a Rolling Stone of the Rolling Stones-and on his last two films: Maya, give me a title and his suite Maya, give me another title.

A crystal and punchlines

On the stage of the Bonlieu Theater, the director was given an honor crystal rewarding his whole career in the hands of his brother Olivier Gondry. A attention that seemed to touch the filmmaker a lot, but the latter quickly found his senses by revealing what an optical effect inspires his prize.

“We can imagine everything with a drawing. It is a trivial gesture, but with a paper and a pencil we can do everything” Early declares the great jack of all all in this masterclass. But it is also a means of bypassing budget problems for a filmmaker. For example, Michel Gondry remembers digital transitions for his film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The production warned it shortly before the shooting that it would not be possible to shoot the sequence initially planned, for budget reasons. Michel Gondry was very quickly reassured by his co-scriptwriter Charlie Kaufman who saw the perfect opportunity to simplify the idea via simpler effects.

Gondry settles his accounts with the big studios

“Cinema is the art of compromise. It is therefore important to have ideas to find solutions to that” Philosopher he before adding humor-and surely a little personal experience: “You have to put your ego in the right place. Good ideas sometimes come from outside. What is horrible, however, is to have the bad ideas of others.”

A tackle addressed to his film Green Hornet, which he does not name, his only very big budget production. From this superhero feature film, Gondry remembers the unpleasant impression of having been hired and then having been fought by production for the same reasons. “I felt like I was on the set of the kid that we want to send early to bed,” he recalls with bitterness

If you want to please Michel Gondry, don't tell him that your favorite film of his filmography is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not because he deny this feature film, but in part because he reminds him of a painful sentimental break. “I like it when I am given another film than this one, because it proves to me that I did not make a single good in my career” he adds with a candor who touches the whole assembly gathered in front of him.

This 2015 film is the one that Michel Gondry considers the most personal

His most personal film is said to be a microbe and diesel. This road movie released in 2015 features the trip undertaken by two teens on the roads of France, aboard the car they themselves built. “It's easier for me to identify with teens aged 14 or 15” explains the filmmaker, who also evokes the importance of his dreams for writing the film:

“I noted all my dreams during the writing of the film, and I put them in the second part of the film. I did not try to explain them, I told myself that if I had them during this period it is that they have a meaning” explains Michel Gondry, who however refuses to make a parallel between his dreams – and his nightmares – with the films he then shot.

This panel also allowed Michel Gondry to reveal the things that annoy him. The fact that we compare our work to “Modeling paste”. Besides, this one is not defined as someone “nostalgic” :: “I have already worked with digital technology, I don't think everything was better before. I just choose the tool most suited to the idea that I want to put in pictures.”

What Michel Gondry hates above all

The director also railed against these directors who plan him, but justify their gesture as a “tribute” to his work. “I hate all those who say that we no longer create anything of our days, but that now everything is recycled” He adds, revealing that he himself gave in to the temptation of a plagiarism for the needs of a videolip but of having apologized to the artist concerned.

Qualifying as “impatient” – wishing to put into practice an idea in the minute when she comes to his mind (which animation obviously does not allow) – Michel Gondry also has fun considering himself as someone “Affected with softened Tourette syndrome.”

In almost 90 minutes of exchange, the director offered a dive into his imagination and also revealed his natural talent as a showman on stage. Or the dream opening for this 2025 edition of the Annecy festival!