Maïlis is a French and Canadian director based in Montreal. After majoring in psychology, she started working in cinema and commercial shoots. Empowering women and provoking discussions through feminist-themed projects has garnered her attention and stimulated her creativity. She firmly believes that visual storytelling can be a powerful vector for impactful ideas and hopes that her filmmaking practice will not only represent and amplify her own voice as a woman but also those of others, elevating a network towards a community.Her work was selected for the Toronto International Women&#039;s Film Festival, the New York Independent Cinema Awards, the London Music Video Festival and Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival, in addition to being featured on the 1.4 Awards longlist and on Director’s Library.

Director

Maïlis

Maïlis' latest video for singer-songwriter Laroie&nbsp;explores the idea of a woman finding the energy to continue going through life, even after losing everything.&nbsp;Interweaving atmospheric shots of the artist inside a stripped-back building and glitchy digital cutaways, the aesthetic feels incredibly contemporary yet nostalgic, which matches the wistful soundscapes in the track.&nbsp;It's another evocative video from Laroie and&nbsp;Maïlis, following in the footsteps of other breathtaking collaborations like <a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2023/02/02/laroie-stuck-here-ma%C3%AFlis/80204">Stuck Here&nbsp;</a>and <a href="https://www.promonews.tv/videos/2022/10/18/laroie-i-keep-hiding-way-back-ma%C3%AFlis/78825">I Keep Hiding.</a>&nbsp;

Alex Lechasseur

Laroie

Marianne Blais

Thomas Fontaine

Catherine Thibault

Travis Komarnisky

Outpost

Martin Gaumond

Laroie 'Tragedy' by Maïlis

Laroie - Tragedy (Official Music Video)

Maïlis documents a series of couples trapped in relationships, in the director's latest video for Montreal singer-songwriter&nbsp;Laroie.From the POV of an omniscient camera, the video for Stuck Here studies several different couples&nbsp;who are fighting both each other&nbsp;and themselves, unable to free themselves from toxic patterns of behaviour.&nbsp;The haunting, ethereal aesthetic uses a textural, digital overlay and slow shutter speeds to create something refreshingly evocative and offbeat, which perfectly complements the angsty character of the track.&nbsp;

Alexandre Lechasseur-Dubé

Carolan Grégoire

Station Service

Ashley Diabo

Outpost Mtl

Juliette Gariépy

Allan Lamber

Soukayna

Laroie 'Stuck Here' by Maïlis

Laroie-'Stuck-Here'-by-Maïlis

Maïlis directs a touching promo for&nbsp;Apacalda, featuring dancer Brittney Canda.The film tells the story of a tragic event that took place in the artist’s childhood; the death of her father. He died due to a gas leak in the heating system of the room he had rented during his travels in Romania. This room was intended to share intimate moments with his mistress, a young woman who also lost her life after this encounter.Written in the first person and from his perspective, the lyrics are based on what her idea of the last minutes of her father’s life were and the thoughts that were coming to him in that final hour.Shot with lingering, foreboding shots of the characters left behind, the video experiments with movement and space to visualise the internal conflict of the situation.&nbsp;[imgtoken data:1]"We imagined that with a dizzied mind, in an almost dreamlike state, his last thoughts were devoted to them, his family, his wife and two children that he was now leaving behind," Maïlis mentions."There is a sense of guilt, shame, but also a dominating 'fact of the matter'&nbsp;telling of what is, leaving the listener to experience a lack of resolve. A glimpse into the void that was created in that fateful moment."&nbsp;Beautiful work that pulls at the heartstrings, and creates a truly haunting atmosphere.&nbsp;

Canada

Samara

Brittney Canda

Cassandra Angheluta

Antoine Ryan

Kes Tagney

Geoffrey Mccaldin

Simon Boisx

Alternative

Singer-songwriter

Apacalda 'Find Me In The Morning' by Maïlis

Apacalda-'Find-Me-In-The-Morning'-by-Maïlis

Maïlis laments the male gaze in this confrontational promo for&nbsp;Apacalda.&nbsp;Haunting and ethereal, the video sees the artist running from something, observing herself in a mirror before being subjected to an uncomfortable, disturbing stare from a pack of&nbsp;men.&nbsp;The darkly evocative concept paints these situations as claustrophobic and painful, using ramped shutter speeds and anxiety-inducing angles to create the feeling of primal fear.The frantic edit amps up the uneasiness of the concept, interjecting hypnotic cutaways and skewed cutaways to build layers of stirring emotion.&nbsp;"When listening to Apacalda's song for the first time I knew right away that I needed to put images on it,"&nbsp;Maïlis says. "It felt like a calling, not even a choice. Addressing women issues is so deeply rooted in me that everything in this video feels so natural. I wanted to explore the blur that can be created in our head when we are too often confronted with these situations and when it plays with our own mind."An exploration on the male gaze : A broad term describing the lens through which men in a heterosexual-masculine-based society illustrate women and the world. Women are generally sexualized, objectified, and seen as inferior through this lens, and it's argued to be a driving ideology behind sexism in modern society. And, rather than a conscious and vicious mindset, this is mainly subconscious through lifelong subjection to biased media, language, job market, etc, in conjunction with natural desires heterosexual men possess."

Apacalda

Apacalda 'Male Gaze' by Maïlis

Apacalda-'Male-Gaze'-by-Maïlis

Maïlis directs an enigmatic promo for Laroie,&nbsp;introducing a male character who wakes up, goes to the club and gets far too wasted, losing his grip under coruscating lights.&nbsp;The textural aesthetic and heavily saturated grade of the video for&nbsp;I. Keep Hiding (Way Back) feel reminiscent of a Wong Kar-Wai film, whilst the abstract narrative suggests much more to come. And indeed, the director confirms as much."Keep Hiding is the first visual of a series where we'll follow different characters whose paths intersect," Maïlis explains."With this music video, I wanted to explore the distress we face when we disappoint ourselves and the mechanisms that are triggered while trying to avoid it."

MaÏlis

Laroie 'I. Keep Hiding (Way Back)' by Maïlis

Laroie-'I.-Keep-Hiding-(way-Back)'-by-Maïlis

Canadian pop-artist&nbsp;Laroie is on top of the world... until she isn't, in&nbsp;Maïlis' promo for Speed of Life.&nbsp;Interpreting the lyrics quite literally, the video shows quite how quickly life can unravel - and reach a disturbing demise - by showing the artist dancing in the street without a care in the world, before being taken out.&nbsp;Daring and original, the video flips the script at the last second, and encourages a rewatch to process the lead-up to the climax."Speed of Life is a good example to never forget that no one is invincible," says Maïlis.&nbsp;"Even when we feel on top of the world and we believe we are completely in control of everything, we should always remember that, in the end, we are nothing at all. And if we forget, life will remind us."

Curtis Halladay

Masha Sitnikova

Charles Etienne Pascal

Shed

Will Albu

Laroie 'Speed Of Life' by Maïlis

Laroie-'Speed-Of-Life'-by-Maïlis

Montreal-based&nbsp;director&nbsp;Maïlis creates a sensual, dreamlike world around alt-pop singer Laroie, with Alice In Wonderland overtones.Maïlis builds an alluring and mysterious mood around Laroie in a series of well-composed sequences involving the natural world, inventive cinematography (by DoP&nbsp;Vincent Gonneville) and a resourceful use of parachute fabric.&nbsp;&nbsp;This is a follow-up to the artist and director collaboration on the video for <a href="https://vimeo.com/521583028" target="_blank">Can't Let Go</a>, winner of Best Music Video at the New York Independent Cinema Awards."I wanted to create a weird but playful music video for Laroie’s song&nbsp;One More, in which we portray the cycle of addiction in a very implicit way," explains&nbsp;Maïlis.&nbsp;"This video is about being trapped in a situation we feel we have no control over and running after the impossible. My personal ode to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll."[imgtoken data:1]

Éric Robillard

Stukely

Nadia Louis-Desmarchais

Vincent Gonneville

Christophe Sauvé

Alexandre Lechasseur-dubé

Benjamin Gagné

Miquela Houle

Alt Pop

Laroie 'One More' by Maïlis

Laroie-'One-More'-by-Maïlis

Magi Merlin takes off all her clothes in MAÏLIS's video for To The Beach. Well, nearly all..."I wanted to create a music video where we can feel an evolution on several levels," says the director.&nbsp;"With each layer of clothing that Magi takes off, she’s feeling more and more light and free."It’s about winning confidence throughout the process of showing vulnerability, and accepting that some things won’t be part of us anymore. And at the end, there’s nothing to hold her back."

United Kingdom

Magi Merlin, Maïlis

Vincent Mcdonald

Mstl Agency

Mary Jane Khalife

Phil Chagnon

Soul

Magi Merlin 'To The Beach' by MAÏLIS

Magi-Merlin-'To-The-Beach'-by-MaÏlis

MaÏlis directs a spectacular one-shot promo for Laroie's Can't Let Go.&nbsp;We see Laroie - real name&nbsp;Gab Godon - enter&nbsp;a stark, clandestine room, where she begins to pick up the beat and flow into abstract choreography.&nbsp;Echoing the nostalgia of the dancefloor, she uses&nbsp;the entire room and hidden space in the shadows, to build to an eccentric, pulsating finale.&nbsp;The camera circles her movements, acting as a spectator to the magical energy of the piece, before becoming erratic&nbsp;towards the crescendo, suggesting a supernatural element to the concept - which is hinted at further through a striking moment of VFX trickery."I wanted to portray the process of a woman freeing herself through movement," explains&nbsp;MaÏlis.&nbsp;"By witnessing the raw balance of her vulnerability and strength, we peer at the core of who she is. Simply, purely."

Maïlis

Director

Featured Work