On My Radar: Audrey Mascina

What’s the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen recently?

It’s not recent, but I have to mention it: Jonathan Glazer’s Odyssey for Levi’s never left me. I still think it’s one of the most powerful metaphors for desire and determination in advertising, in life, in creation - two bodies literally breaking through walls. It says something very simple and so true for us all, that to move forward, you have to break through walls and barriers, be ready to hit resistance and go through it anyway.

More recently, I really loved Michel Gondry’s Chanel film with A$AP Rocky and Margaret Qualley. It’s inventive, absurd, deeply charming. There is something very free that doesn’t try to be perfect. And it confirms why some commercials stay with you. It’s not just a beautiful image, it’s a great cinematic idea.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought?

I’m a bit of a tech geek on set, and I love exploring lenses and rigs. But in my personal life, I love vintage objects: design, clothes… I’m really crazy about lamps and chairs. My latest find is a very nice pair of space age white armchairs — very Clockwork Orange, very Kubrick.

What product could you not live without?

Chicken. Everyone who knows me well laughs about it, because I eat it so often. There's even a restaurant I go to so regularly in Paris where they recently changed the recipe for me.

What’s the best film you’ve seen over the last year?

My crush at the Cannes Film Festival last year was Pillion. It is such a bold film, taking on a difficult subject — consent, emotional dependency, and domination — with such sensitivity. It never feels voyeuristic or gratuitous. What I found so powerful is that the film manages to be sexy, raw and unsettling, while still being deeply emotional and full of tenderness. The casting and performances are remarkable.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

I think everyone should have seen The Piano, by Jane Campion. It’s a film that speaks through silence, bodies, music and desire more than through words. It turns inner life into pure cinema, through landscape, gestures, sensuality, violence and restraint. It’s a deeply physical and mysterious film. One of the most beautiful examples of how cinema can express what cannot be said. 

What’s your preferred social media platform?

Instagram. I like getting lost in it, discovering new artists, creative profiles, visual worlds or following media and people whose work inspires me. I use it as a tool for curiosity, research and connection with other artistic sensibilities.

What’s your favourite TV show?

I like Black Mirror as a way of showing what technology reveals in us: our fears, our contradictions, our need for control, our loneliness. Even though the show sometimes pushes pessimism a little too far, I like how it takes something we all know is already there and pushes it to an extreme. That confrontation with contemporary anxieties feels very powerful to me.

What’s your favourite podcast?

I like On aura tout vu, the cinema podcast on France Inter, hosted by Christine Masson and Laurent Delmas. What I find inspiring is that it gives space to filmmakers, actors and writers and lets them talk about their work, their choices and their relationship to film in a very direct way. 

What have you been most inspired by recently?

By the process of searching for elements that resonate with my feature: music, atmospheres, books, images, fragments of things that somehow echo its world. Also, I love observing people in real life. In the streets, cafés, the subway, talks in restaurants, buses, clubs… everywhere. Real life always reveals details that fiction could never invent. 

If you could only listen to one music artist from now on, who would it be?

Led Zeppelin. Their music has something raw, physical and almost visceral. It feels both instinctive and larger than life. 

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

More madness. One of the first ads that stayed with me as a child was directed by a friend of my parents. It used a domino effect with sugar cubes, and I remember being completely mesmerised by it. For me, advertising has always had this special power: creating wonder in a matter of seconds. Sometimes I miss that today. The sense of boldness, strangeness, play and the desire to make something truly memorable without making it too smooth or too easy to explain. 

Who or what has most influenced your career?

What has influenced me most is the fact that I’ve been shaped by successive layers of culture. I first wanted to become a dancer, so my earliest relationship to the world was through the body, rhythm and movement. Then music became another language for me. I became a singer, released two albums, and performed live. Later, I spent years close to the world of contemporary art and design, surrounded by visual artists, collaborating on books, exhibitions and images. Filmmaking appeared as a natural continuity, the place where all those layers could finally meet.