In the early 1980s, Eddie (Marion Cotillard), a former French star living in exile in the United States, is cast in an Italian science-fiction film being shot at the legendary Cinecitta Studios. Sensing that death is drawing near, Eddie ventures ever deeper into the labyrinth of cinema. In Roma Elastica, director Bertrand Mandico, a baroque dreamer with boundless imagination, pays a sublime tribute to the magicians of Italian cinema, from Federico Fellini to Lucio Fulci. Ornella Muti (Swann in Love, 1984) and Franco Nero (Django, 1966) return to the screen as witnesses to that glorious golden age, while Marion Cotillard mesmerizes the audience as she dances with her younger self and becomes entwined in mysterious tentacles. Noémie Merlant, too, undergoes a radical transformation, bringing tenderness and poignancy to her friendship with Eddie. Woven from cinephilic reverie and melancholy, Roma Elastica is, without question, the boldest and most moving French film of the year.
Bertrand Mandico was born in Toulouse, France in 1971. After studying animation at the Gobelins School in Paris, he built a dreamlike visual world working exclusively on film. His talent was recognized through several shorts, including Boro in the Box (2011), screened at Cannes Directors′ Fortnight, and his feature debut, The Wild Boys (2017), was invited to Venice and won the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Feature. After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (2021) won the FIPRESCI Prize at Locarno and went on to earn a string of awards at genre festivals including Sitges, Austin, and Toronto, building a devoted cult following. His third feature, She Is Conann (2023), was invited to Cannes Directors′ Fortnight. His latest film, Roma Elastica, starring Marion Cotillard and Noémie Merlant, had its world premiere to widespread acclaim in the Midnight Screenings section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Having built a singular world through the texture of film and surrealist imagination, Mandico is regarded as one of the most exciting auteurs working in French cinema today.
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
