Films

Returning to MOTELX after his electrifying environmental (and erotic) dystopia, "After Blue", nominated for Best Film at the Locarno Festival in 2021, Bertrand Mandico immerses us in a new dreamlike journey piloted by a feminist eye: this time, with his interpretation of the literary and mythological character, "Conan the Barbarian", introduced to pop-culture by Robert E. Howard. Travelling through the abyss, Rainer, hellhound and photographer, recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually condemned to death by his own future, through eras, myths and different ages. Freeing the legend from the (testeronised) imagery of the 1982 film directed by John Milius and starred by Schwarzenegger, "Conann" is torture, cannibalism, lust, queerness, self-betrayal and gore, in a macabre and episodic romanticism that doesn't forget the dialogue with the barbarities of the present. Nominated for the Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, this avant-garde turmoil of sensations proves Mandico as the author of some of the most beautiful  transgressions of today’s cinema.