Set in a child’s bedroom transformed into a miniature film studio, famous scenes from cinema history are brought back to life in an unexpected way. Action figures, dolls, toy cars and handmade props replace the original actors, sets and special effects. This is Cute Culte, the opening sponsor title sequence for this year’s Young Director Awards (YDA), created by French production company, Wilders.

Wilders was commissioned to create the film that will open the presentation of the YDA Awards at Cannes Lions next week. Cute Culte is a love letter to cinema. It feels as though a child had spent hours recreating their favourite movies using whatever they could find at hand. From science fiction to thrillers, from horror films to adventure stories, the film conceived and directed by Benjamin Marchal and Nicolas Duval, revisits the collective imagination of cinema through a perspective that is at once playful, humorous, tender and deeply cinephile.

Because before becoming filmmakers, we were all children reenacting the movies that made us dream.

Behind the apparent simplicity of the concept lies a reflection on the transmission of images, the memory of cinema, and the power of imagination. It is a celebration of a time when a bedroom could become a film set and a handful of toys were enough to create an entire world.

The project was produced by Wilders and developed using the creative tools of CRAIZY, the AI-powered creative offering from Digital District.