34
Portrait & Background
Your career spans science, marketing, video games, and cinema, and you were born to a Martinican father and a mother from Tours. How have these two trajectories— professional and personal— shaped your eye as a filmmaker?
Flashmag! Issue 171 April 2026
My father always believed that success came through education. He steered us toward technical streams, which led me to the Lycée Diderot, in Paris’ s 19th arrondissement where I discovered a cinema option. That’ s where it all began: co-writer, actress, scene analysis, making a short film.( titled: A tout de suite) That film won second prize awarded by Jacques Toubon, then Minister of Education. My teacher Rémi Martin was a true catalyst. Cinema then accompanied all my higher education, even through my eight years in London— every time I returned to France, I’ d catch up on everything I’ d missed. Video games are a different story. I wasn’ t allowed to play at home, but my brother would bring me games for the PC. My father always said you should program them, not play them. During my marketing studies, I worked at an interactive leisure company, which eventually led me into the video game industry in London. I came to understand that this medium was powerful for addressing serious subjects. I had the opportunity to champion African games on the international stage alongside Sidick Bakayoko, and to meet Muriel Tramis, a pioneering Martinican figure in the industry, with whom I still collaborate. On the identity side, it was my older brother who awakened me. Mixed-race himself, a child of the 1970s, he navigated these questions before my twin sister and I did, and passed them on to us. He opened my eyes to a history that was never taught in school, particularly through the CM98 association, which I joined during my own studies.
34
Your first short films date from secondary school, and identity was already central. What has never disappeared from that young Mélissandre— and what brought you back to the camera in 2024 after a long break? Rémi Martin wanted to enrich his original project— already centered on identity through twinhood in vitro fertilization( the title is“ The Other, or Mona in Vivo”)—