Kévin Mendiboure

Kévin Mendiboure is a French filmmaker who studied at the ESRA film school. His Screamfest biography says he directed music videos that together passed 400 million views, co-directed the Canal+ feature Cash, and wrote and directed his first feature, The Follower (2017), which it says was distributed in more than 150 countries. His 4½-minute horror short MASK, a dark fable about a young woman whose wish-granting mask turns against her, had its world premiere at Screamfest in October 2025.

HYDROCIDE is a generative-AI science-fiction series that he directed and co-wrote with Vincent Darkman. It is set in 2166, after the oceans have gone, and follows Mira, who fights for the Resistance against her brother, the man who holds the planet's last drinkable water. Mendiboure announced the 23-minute first episode on Instagram on 22 September 2026, and it is on YouTube billed as an AI sci-fi short.

In a follow-up post he said the episode took 370 hours over four months; his launch post had put the work at three months. He wrote that the hard part was keeping a face consistent, that Seedance responds to described facial movements rather than to named emotions, so he directed the performances as muscle movements, and that the fight scenes were the most difficult to get right.