Biography
Vincent Maël Cardona was born in 1980 in Brittany, France. In 2006 he began studying directing at the Paris film school La fémis, where he made his own short films and acted in films by fellow students. His mid-length graduation film "Coucou-les-nuages" (FR 2010) was screened at the 2010 Cannes International Film Festival in the Cinéfondation section, where it won second prize.
In the following years, Cardona was active as an actor; he appeared in several short films and the feature film "Un violent désir de bonheur" (FR 2018). At the end of 2018, he shot the short film "Tente un truc". At the Cannes Festival in 2021, Cardona's feature-length debut "Die Magnetischen" ("Magnetic Beats"), a French-German co-production, premiered in the Quinzaine des Realisateurs section. The coming-of-age film about a teenager who runs a pirate radio station in Brittany in the early 1980s until he is drafted into military service in West-Berlin won the Prix SACD for Best French-language Film at Cannes; at the Deauville Film Festival, it was awarded the Prix d'Ornano-Valenti. At the French film award César 2022, Cardona and his producers won the award for Best First Feature. The German theatrical release of "Die Magentischen" was in July 2022.