“When I was little, Baba Yaga terrified me," Christophe Gautry recalls. His mother, who was from Poland, introduced him to this most frightening of witches in Slavic stories. Baba Yaga made such an impression that he devoted his first film to her. Indeed, Gautry is convinced that he’s still a beginner, but in fact this 24-year-old computer engineer was working at a Paris computer services company while making animated films in his kitchen, using “modelling clay and a computer.” One film was chosen for a film biennial, convincing him to drop everything else and devote himself to his passion. He entered La Poudrière, a well-known animation school, and learned to write screenplays while working with the Folimage studio "on short subjects, so that I could become familiar with different animation techniques and environments.” He never wanted to work on other people’s projects. His goal was to be a real “auteur.” That’s how he ended up delving into his own childhood and diverse cultural roots (his father is from the Antilles) in search of an original story, rather than adapting an existing one. He used puppets, “for the pleasure of playing with a mix of colours and materials.” That’s a lot more stimulating, he says, than “tickling” the back of a (computer) mouse.

AGE: 30 I PASSIONS: animation, movies, images and storytelling. I PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE: you never know where you're going but you always end up there. I GOALS: to organize my life so that I can live out my passions. I FAVOURITE FILMS: Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, David Lynch’s Elephant Man, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Paul Grimaud’s The King and the Bird.