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Raphael Quenard, a young French actor, is taking 2025 by storm with rare intensity. He releases Clamser à Tataouine, a dark debut novel, and co-directs I Love Peru, a hybrid film blending introspection and absurdity. The actor turned writer, then filmmaker, embodies a generation of polymorphous artists.
His novel, published by Flammarion, unfolds in the voice of a serial killer obsessed with social inequality. He hunts his victims at random through different neighborhoods, in a mad gesture tinged with sociological melancholy. This work, though violent, aims to hold up a mirror to the reader. According to Quenard, "fiction should not be expected to repair, but to reveal." This rejection of didacticism roots him in a libertarian literary tradition, close to Louis-Ferdinand Céline or Virginie Despentes.
From Chemistry to Words: A Striking Trajectory
Born in 1991 in Échirolles, a working-class suburb of Grenoble, Raphael Quenard grows up between books and childhood games. Born to an engineer and an insurance employee, he first chooses scientific excellence. However, he later explores other horizons. He enrolls at the École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris, then leaves for an internship at Imperial College London. There, an inner dissonance pushes him toward theater.
Back in Paris, he trains under Jean-Laurent Cochet, master of diction and craftsman of language. He discovers a new relationship to the world, based on raw emotion. In addition, he adopts an oblique gaze. Finally, he uses language as an instrument of rebellion. Quickly, he strings together short films, forging a magnetic presence unlike any other.
An Identifiable Style, a Rare Voice
In The Bleeding Heart (2023), he plays a lost soul with a big heart, shaken by contained anger. In Yannick, by Quentin Dupieux, he brings a singular, offbeat, yet moving density. These performances earn him two nominations at the 2024 César Awards, including Best Male Breakthrough, which he wins.
Since then, his name has appeared on posters for a range of films such as Along Came Love. In addition, he appears in Beating Hearts. Finally, he is featured in The Three Musketeers. He blends comedy, drama, political irony, and raw humanity. His delivery, packed with mental images, sometimes disorients, but often captivates. He describes it as "an overabundance of modesty that flips into logorrhea."
I Love Peru: An Intimate Farce and Existential Vertigo
In 2025, he co-writes and co-directs I Love Peru with Hugo David. The film follows an actor who has lost love, roles, and his bearings. He dreams that he is a condor, a creature perched high in the Andes, keeper of silent wisdom. This journey, between hallucination and poetry, was presented at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. It received a modest but sincere ovation.
The film unsettles with its fragmented structure. Some scenes verge on nonsense; others strike with their raw beauty. At times it recalls Holy Motors by Leos Carax, at others The Holy Mountain by Jodorowsky. But Quenard leaves his mark on it: a blend of the trivial and the metaphysical, tears and the grotesque.
A Deeply Felt Relationship to Culture and Language
A recent guest on La Grande Librairie, Quenard shared his insecurity about the classics he has not read. He sees writing as a way to reconcile knowledge and instinct. Clamser à Tataouine is not just a crime novel. It is a veiled essay on systemic violence, male loneliness, and social pressures. In it, the author dares discomfort while letting flashes of tenderness slip through.
His inspiration comes from the pavement, accents, barroom details. He claims a physical realism, in the vein of a Kassovitz or a Zadig & Voltaire with a dusty aftertaste. For him, language is both refuge and weapon. He seeks to say what is left unsaid, to name what rubs, what sticks.
Video unavailableQuenard, Emblem of a Downgraded Yet Flamboyant Generation
Beyond his singular path, Raphael Quenard embodies a contemporary tension. That of an educated but uncertain, hyper-sensitive generation in search of meaning. He does not claim to be a spokesperson. But his voice carries precisely because it doubts, veers, and sometimes contradicts itself.
He inspires young artists, often from modest backgrounds, who see in him a possible model: free, curious, unapologetic. He belongs to a lineage of actor-writers alongside Vincent Macaigne, Rabah Naït Oufella, and Adèle Haenel, all driven by a desire for rupture and experimentation.
An Open Future, Between Popular Roots and Poetic Boldness
With Clamser à Tataouine and I Love Peru, Raphael Quenard asserts a style, a universe, a vision. He moves between forms, media, and intensities—with nothing but poetic boldness as his companion. He has no career plan, only an energy, almost vital, to create.
The next step is now eagerly awaited. A play? A second novel? An experimental series? Quenard’s future is taking shape without a reading key. And that vertigo is precisely what makes him so valuable in a cultural landscape that is sometimes static.