Romain Demongeot: Dubstepping to Dystopia

From disturbing visions of a watery future to a spot of passionate dogging with canines, judo black belt filmmaker Romain Demongeot riffs on realising big visions with two minds on small budgets

What will the world be like in 50 years? With Love 2062, his promo for French electronic musicians De Andria & Ghisal, art director and aspiring filmmaker Romain Demongeot has done a good job of imagining it. And unless you like the idea of breathing through a facemask and making love via an injection in your arm and some hi-tech contact lenses, it’s bad news if you live in Paris.

The film, which Demongeot spent a year working on as a collaborative project with a group of friends, begins with an introduction explaining that global warming has resulted in melting ice caps and the disappearance of vegetation. Rising sea levels meant that the surviving population has retreated to the highest points of land, where ‘cyber love hotels’ offer the only source of pleasure.

“The idea came from the fact that I grew up in the suburbs,” says Demongeot, in the theatre room at DDB Paris, where he’s worked for three years. He met partner Romain Foulcher there and formed digital creative team Les Romains after they won a Grands Prix Stratégie award for 2011’s INPES Domestic Risks. “There’s no vegetation and lots of violence because of ill-managed immigration. We’re used to seeing drugs,” Demongeot adds.

He’s articulate and well-educated, but with, he explains, a history as a dreadlocked drug addict with piercings. Since those days he’s graduated from design school ESAG Penninghen Paris, earned a black belt in Judo, is studying drama at night classes to better understand his acting subjects and has developed a serious ambition to direct features.

“I want to make movies. That’s the goal,” says the focused and driven talent. “My goal in doing this was to become a director, a freelancer for production companies. I told that to my creative director and worked less with him for about six months (whilst making Love 2062) because he knows that I want to do something else. I love advertising but prefer movies.”

Demongeot’s promo, set to the artist’s powerful dubstep-fuelled soundtrack, was originally penned as a feature, but due to lack of funding was cut down to a short film, and then eventually appeared as a music video. But despite being delivered for around £7,000, the promo has the look and feel of a blockbuster movie and features the director’s acting-school peers as the washed-up characters who crave a sense of the reality their world once knew. Demongeot also appears as the owner of the cyber love hotel we are taken to, and his night class tutor even got involved to co-direct part of the piece.

Interviewing Demongeot, you get the feeling he’s a people person despite an aforementioned difficult upbringing on the outskirts of Paris. He and his friends also feature in a previous promo he made called Yellow Books for Dead Sea Lions. The project had him directing dogs which he’d found through a classifieds website in France.

“I had this idea of people kissing dogs in slow motion, and I mean really, really kissing,” he explains whilst acting out the tongue movements he imposed on his cast. Having used chocolate and ketchup to lure the interest of the canines, the result is a crazy set of kissing scenes which chop and change with the music. “The band weren’t really well known and wanted a web presence so we decided to make something shocking,” he adds.

The art of collaboration

Demongeot admits that he enjoys “working with two brains” and before taking up his role at DDB Paris, he spent two years at French digital agency Duke Interactive, before meeting Foulcher at DDB under CEO Matthieu de Lesseux and then-creative director Benjamin Przespolewski (read more about him on page 62).

It was with childhood best friend Sébastien Novac, however, that Demongeot co-wrote Love 2062, and he’s hoping the film will provide a springboard for his directing career to take off.

“I’ve met some production companies who’ve seen it but I don’t know what will happen. I would like to direct commercials as well as personal stuff because it interests me to tell stories through film.”

Demongeot knows it may be a long, hard road before he’ll get to live out his directing dream, but has already begun work on the follow-up to Love 2062. “I’m preparing the next one right now,” he says before hinting at the start of next year for its release. “It’s 12 minutes instead of five and is more of a short film but there won’t be a lot of dialogue; it’ll be a voiceover.”

Earning his Judo black belt at the age of 19, the creative karate kid clearly has his eye on the top tier of directing, and from what we can see, will continue to kick his way up to fulfil his dreams.