Sébastien Marnier (born September 22, 1977) is a French film director and screenwriter, best known for his 2022 film The Origin of Evil (L'Origine du mal).[1]
A graduate of Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis, he was a contributor to Michel Reilhac's 2002 film The Good Old Naughty Days (Polissons et Galipettes),[2] and co-directed two short films, The Main Game (Le Grand Avoir) and Handsome Jack (Le Beau Jacques), with Élise Griffon. As a novice emerging director, however, he had difficulty securing funding to make a feature film, and he turned to other jobs for a number of years.
In 2011 he published the novel Mimi.[3] In 2013, the novel won the Prix du roman gai for the best LGBT-themed novel published in France and Belgium in the previous five years.[4] He subsequently collaborated with Caroline Lunoir, Fanny Saintenoy and Anne-Sophie Stefanini on the collective novel Qu4tre, and published the novella Une vie de petits-fours[5] and the graphic novel Salaire net et monde de brutes, which was inspired by his own employment history of short-term and temporary work.[6]
Faultless (Irréprochable), his feature directorial debut, was released in 2016.[7] He followed up with School's Out (L'Heure de la sortie) in 2018,[8] and The Origin of Evil in 2022.[9]
The Origin of Evil was the winner of the Audience Award for Narrative Features at the 2023 Frameline Film Festival.[10]
