An R-rated comic treatment of film’s famous directors

A loving but wickedly humorous tribute to cinema in graphic non-fiction, Sinemania! casts its spotlight on film directors whose lives behind the camera are every bit as compelling, strange, and eccentric as the most headline-making film actors.

Twenty-three North American and European directors — including Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Roman Polanski — are given a parodic biography that highlights these men’s twisted genius, rampant egos, and weird behaviour. Sinemania! is unsparing in portraying them, mercilessly and affectionately, in Cossette’s striking illustrations.

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Sophie Cossette's profile page

“Sinemania! focuses a loving if jaundiced eye to all things filmic, from the silents through the evocation of the silents (the “tribute” to Rudolf Nureyev as Rudolph Valentino is a pip) in the ’70s, to something that comes within a decade or so of what we consider “modern day” in its nod to the career of Steve Buscemi. Along the way, it manages to more or less constantly entertain, occasionally instruct, and even momentarily enchant (Dietrich’s gypsified image from Touch of Evil barking out at Orson Welles, “Your future is all used up! Why don’t you go home?” jumps off the page). Which is pretty damned good if you ask me.” — New York Journal of Books

“What serious film lover hasn’t wondered how Spike Lee might unload on Woody Allen at Cannes? Or wanted to be a fly on the wall as Sam Peckinpah and Rainer Werner Fassbinder duke it out over who was the biggest badass? Cossette’s appetite for perverse parody is happily limitless.” —NOW Magazine