Guillaume Maidatchevsky

Guillaume Maidatchevsky is a French director/writer/cinematographer specializing in movies featuring animals. After a career as a naturalist, he became a filmmaker working in various mediums, first in television and then in feature films, starting with a film (as director-cinematographer) about wolves, Vivre avec les loups (2016), filmed in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains.

Maidatchevsky’s second feature documentary as director/co-writer was A Reindeer’s Journey/Ailo, Une odyssée en Laponie (2018), about reindeer in Finland’s Lapland region and narrated in the English-language version by Donald Sutherland and backed by the venerable French film company, Gaumont. Maidatchevsky made his first dramatic feature and his first involving a domesticated animal with the French-Swiss co-production, A Cat’s Life/Mon Chat et Moi, La Grande Aventure de Rroû (2023), starring Capucine Sainson-Fabresse and Corinne Masiero, and which is set in Paris and the Vosges Mountains.

Guillaume Maidatchevsky’s third feature film focused on arctic foxes enduring the Climate Crisis, titled Kina & Yuk, Renards de la Banquise (2023), on which Maidatchevsky was co-writer and director, co-starring Virginie Efira, Veronique Boileau, and Trinity Vittrekwa, and which was backed by Valdes/TF1 Studio/France 3 Cinema while grossing $2.4 million in theatrical release.