26/06/2026
Et l'année des prix continue.... on s'y habituerait presque !
🏆 Best Cinematography Award – Feature Movies | FICIMAD 2026 Matthew Lancit – Fais le mort! (Play Dead!)
Congratulations to Matthew Lancit, winner of the Best Cinematography Award (Feature Movies) at FICIMAD 2026 for the extraordinary visual achievement of Fais le mort! (Play Dead!).
Filmed over the course of five years and inspired by the director's own life, Play Dead! is a profoundly original hybrid work that dissolves the boundaries between documentary, performance art, autobiography, and body horror. Living with Type 1 diabetes becomes the starting point for an intensely personal cinematic exploration, where illness is transformed into an invisible, almost supernatural presence haunting both the body and the domestic space.
Matthew Lancit's cinematography is the film's beating heart. Every frame is meticulously composed, balancing realism with surreal imagery to create an atmosphere that is unsettling, intimate, and unexpectedly beautiful. The camera observes the everyday with extraordinary sensitivity while gradually introducing theatrical, burlesque, and phantasmagorical elements that reflect the psychological experience of chronic illness. The result is a visual language that is as poetic as it is emotionally devastating.
Premiering internationally to critical acclaim, Play Dead! has been celebrated for its innovative fusion of documentary and fiction, as well as for its deeply human portrait of vulnerability, resilience, and love. Critics have praised the film's ability to confront illness without sentimentality, combining irony, tenderness, and moments of dark humor into an unforgettable cinematic experience.
Canadian filmmaker Matthew Lancit has built a distinctive career creating films that exist between ethnography, performance, diary cinema, and experimental filmmaking. His works have been presented at prestigious institutions including the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, the Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin, the Jerusalem Cinematheque, and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, while several of his films have been preserved by Library and Archives Canada—a testament to the singula
