Michaël Dichter

Michaël has self-produced and directed three short films among which POLLUX (2020), nominated for a Cesar Award. He also acted in two feature films (VIE SAUVAGE by Cédric Kahn and TELLE MÈRE, TELLE FILLE by Noémie Saglio, in which he plays the male lead alongside Camille Cottin and Juliette Binoche). THE FANTASTIC THREE (2023) is his first feature film.

“FANTASTIC THREE took shape in my mind far from the Ardennes, at the foot of the towers of Bagnolet, where I grew up. It was already the story of a group of friends who thought they'd be together for life, but whose friendship was about to be put to the test.
It was a short film first, and migrated to the East of France. Bagnolet had found its twin in social condition: Revin, a small town in the crisis-stricken Ardennes region, wedged between factory after factory that had closed and a gigantic black hill that seemed impassable. Idle families, a feeling of abandonment, a reality very similar to my own.
The setting had changed, but the initial desire remained unchanged: to film this peripheral France and its sinister universe, without being sinister, since it was treated from the point of view of our heroes, these inventive, strong-willed pre-teens.
I met kids who were experiencing what I'd experienced at their age. A sense of isolation, of being left to their own devices, and at the same time, the feeling of belonging to a community: that of a territory. And even if everything around them seems serious, their age allows them to keep a certain distance.
I experienced the story of the short film in my teens. This gang of friends was mine, except for one thing: the character of Max is the only one who came out of my imagination. The others really existed.
When the short began its life at festivals, Max continued to haunt me. I kept asking myself why he was so familiar to me, and why his presence on paper and on set was more sensitive to me than that of the other characters. I knew his fears, his strengths, his past, his father's departure, his distracted mother...
I knew his fear and even loathing of solitude, his desire to always be accompanied, to place his friends at the center of his life, and to hope in vain for his father's return. I knew Max better than anyone else, not because I'd created him, but because we were one. Max was me. What I missed the most as a child and then as a teenager was hope, hope that my situation would change, that we would once again form a close-knit family that I could count on. It was this hope that I decided to bring to Max's character, through Sébastien, his older brother. 
But things don't go as planned. When Sébastien gets out of prison and returns home, what at first seemed like a dream quickly turns into a nightmare. For Sébastien has not changed, and the demons of yesteryear resurface, while Max continues to cling to his dream of a reunited family.
[...] I wanted to anchor Fantastic Three in a social cinema that delves into the trajectories of teenagers losing their bearings in an adult world that seems to both abandon them and catch up with them. It's a film with a buddy-movie feel, but also and above all an adventure film that veers towards the harsh, tense and bitter film noir in which these children lose their carefree spirit.”