Michel Gondry

Gondry has directed numerous music videos, including Björk's "Human Behaviour" in 1993 and "Bachelorette" in 1997, both of which earned him nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Music Video. He also directed several videos for The White Stripes. He is also a record producer, most notably producing several tracks for American rapper and illustrator MC Paul Barman on his 2009 album Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud.

Michel Gondry is from Versailles. He is the grandson of inventor Constant Martin. He attended art school in Paris. While studying there, he formed the band Oui Oui, for which he was the drummer.

Gondry's vision and career began with his emphasis on emotion. Much of his inspiration, he says, came from the 1960 French family film Le voyage en ballon. He became known for his inventive visual style and distinctive manipulation of mise en scène.

Gondry's career as a filmmaker began with creating music videos for the French rock band Oui Oui, in which he also served as a drummer. The style of his videos for Oui Oui caught the attention of music artist Björk, who asked him to direct the video for her song "Human Behaviour". The collaboration proved long-lasting, with Gondry directing a total of eight music videos for Björk. In 1994 his "Human Behaviour" video earned him a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Music Video; "Bachelorette" earned another nomination in 1997. Other artists who have collaborated with Gondry on more than one occasion include Daft Punk, the White Stripes, the Chemical Brothers, the Vines, Steriogram, Radiohead, and Beck. Gondry's video for Lucas Secon's "Lucas with the Lid Off" was nominated in the Best Music Video (short form) category at the 37th Grammy Awards, Gondry directed the music video for the Paul McCartney song "Dance Tonight", in which he makes a cameo appearance. In 2014, Gondry produced the video for Metronomy's single "Love Letters", taken from the album of the same name.

Gondry has also created numerous television commercials. He pioneered the "bullet time" technique later adapted in The Matrix in the 1996 "Smarienberg" commercial for Smirnoff vodka, as well as directing a trio of inventive holiday-themed advertisements for clothing retailer Gap. According to the 2004 Guinness World Records, Gondry's Levi's 501 Jeans "Drugstore" spot held the record for "Most awards won by a TV commercial".

His brother Olivier "Twist" Gondry is also a television commercial and music video director creating videos for bands such as The Stills, Hot Hot Heat, Daft Punk and The Vines. He has a son named Paul and a daughter named Maya.

Gondry made his feature film debut in 2001 with Human Nature, garnering mixed reviews. His second film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (also his second collaboration with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman), was released in 2004 and received very favourable reviews, becoming one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. Eternal Sunshine utilises many of the image manipulation techniques that Gondry had experimented with in his music videos. Gondry won an Academy Award alongside Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth for the screenplay of Eternal Sunshine. The style of Gondry's music videos often relies on videography and camera tricks which play with frames of reference. Gondry directed the musical documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2006) which followed comedian Dave Chappelle as he attempted to hold a large, free concert in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York. His following film, The Science of Sleep, was released in 2006. This film stars Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, and marked a return to the fantastical, surreal techniques he employed in Eternal Sunshine. He was asked by French comic duet Éric and Ramzy to direct Seuls Two, but declined; by his suggestion, Éric and Ramzy subsequently asked Mr Oizo to direct another movie, Steak. Interior Design, one third of the 2008 anthology film Tokyo!, was next for Gondry. Interior Design was based on the comic book "Cecil and Jordan in New York" by Gabrielle Bell but was adapted from New York City to Tokyo for the film. In 2009, The Thorn in the Heart, another feature documentary, was released, it is about Michel's aunt Suzette and her son Jean-Yves. In 2011, Gondry directed The Green Hornet, a superhero film by Sony starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou and Christoph Waltz; Rogen co-wrote the script. In 2011, he was the head of the jury for the short film competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. His film The We and the I was selected to be screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. On 3 January 2013, Gondry released an animated short Haircut Mouse on his official Vimeo channel. In February 2013, he released a hand-drawn animated documentary on famed linguist Noam Chomsky, Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?. In April 2013, he directed Mood Indigo, based upon Boris Vian's 1947 novel Froth on the Daydream. In 2015 his feature film Microbe & Gasoline was released, a smaller scale endeavour after the troubled production of Mood Indigo. The latter also served as inspiration for 2023's The Book of Solutions. In 2024, his first animated feature-length film, Maya, Give Me a Title was released. His daughter, Maya Gondry, voiced herself in the film, and Pierre Niney voiced a character in the film. It also has a short live-action sequence.

In September 2006, Gondry made his debut as an installation artist at Deitch Projects in New York City's SoHo gallery district. The show, called "The Science of Sleep: An Exhibition of Sculpture and Pathological Creepy Little Gifts" featured props from his film, The Science of Sleep, as well as film clips and a selection of gifts that the artist had given to women he was interested in, many of them former or current collaborators, Karen Baird, Kishu Chand, Dorothy Barrick and Lauri Faggioni. A leitmotif of the film is a 'Disastrology' calendar; Gondry commissioned the painter Baptiste Ibar to draw harrowing images of natural and human disasters. Gondry was an artist in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 and 2006.