Biography

Telling the stories of others is at the heart of Sandrine Béchade's work. Her filmmaking moves freely between documentary and fiction. In addition to writing and directing, Sandrine works as a content producer and script consultant on various productions. In 2018, she made her first fiction short, Ange & Ovni (Angel & Alien), a sensitive portrait of the friendship between two outsider teenagers that went on to win numerous awards. Her next short, Pacific Bell, co-written with author Julie Hétu, poetically explores the migration of children and was presented at Fantasia and LA Shorts, among others. Sandrine is currently directing three documentaries to be released in theatres in 2026 and 2027. Her first fiction feature is in development: Patof Blou, a story inspired by the life of the Quebec actor behind Patof the clown, the iconic character of the 1970s.

Filmography

PACIFIC BELL / fiction / 22 min / 2022 / Télé-Québec Award for Best Short Film, Val-Morin Auteur Film Festival 2024; Special Jury Narrative Short Award, Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival 2024; MELS Award for Best Film (Bronze), Fantasia 2023; Outpost MTL Award, Prends ça court! Gala 2023; LA Shorts 2023, Off-Courts Trouville 2023, Tirana 2023, RVQC 2023, etc.

MON ONCLE PATOF / documentary / 52 min / 2021 / Nominated for Best Documentary Direction at the Prix RÉALS; Best Editing Award, Canadian Cinema Editors 2022; Gémeaux 2022 nominations for Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Sound

BICHE & LOUVE (Doe & She-Wolf) / fiction / 11 min / 2020 / Les Percéides 2020, TISFF Thess Int. 2020, Cinema on the Bayou 2021, etc.

ANGE & OVNI (Angel & Alien) / fiction / 20 min / 2018 / Nominated for Best Female Director, Satisfied Eye International Film Festival 2020; Best Short, Female Eye Film Festival 2019; Special Jury Narrative Short Award, Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival 2019; Grand Jury Prize, Dinan Short Film Festival 2018; Jury Prize and Best Director Award, Festival Libres Émois 2018; Telefilm Talent Tout Court, Cannes Film Festival 2018; Off-Courts Trouville 2018, RVQC 2019, Pacific Meridian 2019, Carrousel de Rimouski 2020, etc.

Director's Note

This is the most important and most personal project I have ever taken on. The film is an observation of the adult in the making: of what fades as childhood ends, and of what remains unchanged when we “become” adults. I dove into this dizzying project intending to open a door onto the vast inner world of adolescence, one that adults rarely get to see. I sought to build a story woven from conversations that are sometimes deep, sometimes funny, but that above all reveal a teenage wisdom too seldom heard. Over the ten years our conversations span, I took the six young people outdoors, away from their daily lives and mine: into the Quebec forest. I found that talking in nature created a bubble of confidences for them, our safe cocoon. As they came of age, in the last surges of their adolescence, I set off on a journey with each of them, toward a bigger and more unsettling bubble this time. Together, we chose a territory for each of them, more precisely a terrestrial biome: desert, tropical forest, tundra, taiga, temperate grassland. Mirroring their personalities and serving as a metaphor for their relationship with the world, each ecosystem became the culmination of a dialogue about how they had transformed over the years.