A filmmaker under pressure
 

PostED ON 17.10.2025

The Lumière Award presents a tribute to Mann’s singular gaze and uncanny ability to capture reality. A close-up portrait of the filmmaker, currently  preparing the sequel to Heat.

© Paramount - DreamWorks / DR

From Manhunter (1986) to Heat (1995), his characters observe each other in mirror-like images. Good and evil entities share the same isolation and principles of efficiency, simply not the same idea of morality. ‘Their opposition is a symmetry’, Mann explains in Sight & Sound in 2001. The mise en scène echoes his vision: geometric shots, an abstract city, a temporal suspension, where the image occupies a mental terrain, lucidly defining the distance between unbridled mastery and loss of control.

With The Insider (1999), the space, shot for the first time with a handheld camera, is reduced to the enclosed hub of a television studio. The moral battle, waged against economic power, features Jeffrey Wigand, a whistle-blower who denounces the tobacco industry that had brought him wealth. Words are weaponised, and Mann films Russell Crowe like a sniper preparing for what he hopes will be the fatal shot.

In Ali (2001), his biopic about Cassius Clay, tension arises from an internal conflict experienced by the boxer when his personal convictions are at odds with his overexposure to the public eye. In Collateral (2004), he transposes his questions and visual grammar to an electric Los Angeles, traversed in a single night. ‘Shooting in HD means filming reality without cover,’ he points out in the review American Cinematographer; for Mann, technology remains a vehicle for truth, not style. The picture also features Tom Cruise as a bone-chilling killer. Memorable.

His cinema resonates with the technological changes sweeping through the industry. Digital filming, which he adopts for the first time for Collateral, conveys his desire to embrace the world with all its neurotic manifestations: reflections, textures, speed of movement; a catalogue of adrenaline-fuelled sensations. 

© 2004 DREAMWORKS, LLC and Paramount Pictures
Collatéral (2004)

‘I don't base films on stories,’ Mann tells Indiewire, ‘I make films about the way these stories become visible.’ A fair account of his approach to filmmaking: a search for truth above spectacle. The Lumière Award presented to him today is thus a recognition of this vision of a filmmaker for whom each image is an act of precision and each character the subject of an equation to be solved.  

Michael Mann's cinema does not draw conclusions; it observes, takes stock and leaves room for doubt between what we can control and what the world imposes on us. In Heat, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro interact as ‘equals’, but each from their own fortified camp; in Miami Vice (2006), the duo of police officers fade into the chaos and noise. Hesitant, feverish endings do not betray an inability to finish, but more certainly point to an awareness that ‘pure action,’ says Mann, ‘never erases the loneliness of the character who acts’... and his unbearable, all-consuming vanity.

Carlos Gomez

Read: 

Michael Mann, horizon bleu. Rockyrama. 

Events 

Master class
Meet Michael Mann
Les Célestins, Theatre de Lyon 
Friday, 17 October at 3 pm at the Theatre des Célestins

Presentation ceremony of the Lumière Award to Michael Mann 
Amphithéâtre 3000
Friday, 17 October at 7.30 pm at the Conference Centre
>> Tickets available ici

The programme

The Jericho Mile by Michael Mann (The Jericho Mile, film TV, 1979, 1h37)
Institut Lumière (Hangar) Sun. 19 at 9 am

Thief by Michael Mann (1981, 2h04)
UGC Confluence Sat. 18 at 8 pm

The Keep by Michael Mann (1983, 1h36)
Pathé Bellecour Fri. 17 at 4.15 pm

Manhunter by Michael Mann (1986, 2h04)
UGC Confluence Fri. 17 at 4.30 pm

The Last of the Mohicans by Michael Mann (, 1992, 1h55)
UGC Confluence Sat. 18 at 1.45 pm | Comœdia Sun. 19 at 11.15 am

Heat by Michael Mann (1995, 2h50)
Halle Tony Garnier Sun. 19 at 3 pm

The Insider by Michael Mann (1999, 2h38)
Pathé Bellecour Sat. 18 at 4.30 pm

Ali by Michael Mann (2001, 2h37)
UGC Confluence Fri. 17 at 9 pm

Collateral by Michael Mann (Collateral, 2004, 2h)
Comœdia Fri. 17 at 2.30 pm | UGC Confluence Sun. 19 at 4.45 pm

Miami Vice by Michael Mann (, 2006, 2h19)
Lumière Terreaux Sat. 18 at 9.15 pm

Blackhat by Michael Mann (, 2015, 2h13)
Comœdia Sat. 18 at 5.15 pm

Ferrari by Michael Mann (2023, 2h10)
Amphithéâtre – Centre de Congrès Fri. 17 at 7.30 pm


Serie

Tokyo Vice – Season 1, Episode 1 ‘The Test’ by Michael Mann (The Test, 2022, 55min)
Institut Lumière (Hangar) Sat. 18 at 10.15 pm