Author, singer, filmmaker, and poet, Mathias Malzieu is a multifaceted creator whose fertile imagination permeates literature, music, and film. With his unique voice and dreamlike world, he has become one of the most original and endearing artists on the French cultural scene.
He was born in Montpellier in 1974, grew up in Valence and then moved to Paris. A passionate fan of rock, fantasy cinema and surrealist literature, he founded the group Dionysos in 1993, which combines punk energy, absurdist poetry and unbridled storytelling. With albums like Western sous la neige (2002), Monsters in Love (2005) ou La Mécanique du cœur (2007), Dionysos has made a profound impact on the French musical landscape. Malzieu is the singer, songwriter and orchestra conductor, infusing each song with his own tender, wacky imagination.
Writing is a natural extension of music, and vice versa. In 2007, he embarked on a career as a writer. His first novel, La Mécanique du cœur, is a runaway success. This gothic tale in the style of Tim Burton, illustrated by Joann Sfar, became a bestseller translated into more than 20 languages. He made an animated film from it in 2014, co-directed with Stéphane Berla, which received a César nomination for best animated film.
Several novels followed, confirming his taste for stories on the border between reality and fantasy: Metamorphosis at the Edge of the Sky (2011), The Smallest Kiss Ever Recorded (2013), Diary of a Vampire in Pajamas (2016), in which he recounts with humor and intensity his battle with a rare disease. This moving autobiographical tale won the Prix Essai France Télévisions and was adapted as a book-concert by Dionysos.
In 2020, he publish Une sirène à ParisA new fantasy romance that blends love, the sea, and magic. The novel has also been adapted into a film, which he directed, starring Nicolas Duvauchelle and Marilyn Lima. Malzieu confirms his talent as a skilled filmmaker, an heir to Méliès and the great storytellers of cinema. The film captivates with its retro-futuristic atmosphere, its bittersweet humor, and its taste for the wondrous.
Mathias Malzieu is a cross-disciplinary artist. Each of his projects is a world-work where texts, music, images and emotions come together. He composes records like he writes novels, and makes films like he stages shows. In 2022, he and Dionysos released the album L’Extraordinarium, A selection of his most iconic songs, accompanied by symphonic versions and unreleased duets.
On stage, he becomes a lightning-fast storyteller, a tightrope walker of the imagination. Blending rock and narrative, his concerts are true sensory journeys. Whether he evokes a little boy with a fragile clock, an invisible lover, or a vampire in a bathrobe, Malzieu touches the audience with his sincerity, his gentle madness, and his poetry.
Always on the lookout for new fields of expression, today he continues to alternate between writing, music, film, drawing and all kinds of artistic collaborations. In 2023, he published Le Guerrier de porcelaine, a moving novel about childhood and war, inspired by his father’s story. He is currently developing a film adaptation.
Mathias Malzieu is a tightrope walker of the imagination, a craftsman of the marvelous. At a time when disciplines are being compartmentalized, he patiently builds a unique body of work, both fragile and exalted, where each book, each song, each image resonates like a mechanical heartbeat — always alive.
