The Big Picture
- Avant-garde director Bertrand Mandico reimagines fiction’s famous barbarian in mind-bending epic She Is Conann.
- The trailer introduces multiple Conanns from different time periods, played by different actors, with a humanoid hellhound as her guide.
- Shot on a minimal budget, the black-and-white film explores time and regret, providing a scandalous and bizarre viewing experience.
Fiction’s most famous barbarian gets reimagined by avant-garde auteur Bertrand Mandico in the new trailer for She Is Conann. The mind-bending, century-spanning epic will premiere in US theaters on February 2. In the new trailer for Mandico’s re-envisioning of the Conan mythos, we see the familiar origins of Conan (or Conann); orphaned and enslaved by the barbarian queen Sanja (Julia Riedler) at a young age, she becomes the fiercest and most cunning warrior of her bygone era.
However, the trailer quickly diverges from the story known to pulp magazine and comic-book devotees; we are soon introduced to multiple Conanns, from across time and various points in her life, all played by different actors, including Claire Duburcq, Christa Théret, Sandra Parfait, and Françoise Brion. Her guide through past, future, and present is Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), a humanoid hellhound. Shot largely on 35mm black-and-white film on a minimal budget, She Is Connan is a mind-bending exploration of time and regret. It is director Mandico’s third full-length feature after 2017’s The Wild Boys and 2021’s After Blue. It will be released in select theaters in North America on February 2, 2024.
Who Is Conan the Barbarian?
Created by pulp writer Robert E. Howard in 1931, the mighty Conan the Barbarian was a powerful yet cunning rogue, living in Earth’s distant Hyborian Age. The character became a cultural icon in the 1970s, thanks to an extremely popular Marvel Comics series, and made his way to the big screen in 1982, where he was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in a star-making role.
The film spawned a 1984 sequel, Conan the Destroyer, and a legion of imitators; for a time, multiplexes and video rental stores were dominated by musclebound, sword-wielding barbarian warriors. The film was remade in 2011 with Jason Momoa in the lead role, and Schwarzenegger has mulled over returning to the role himself. She Is Conann won’t be the first time Conan has had a distaff counterpart; Red Sonja, a Howard-derived character from the comics, starred in her own film in 1985, with Brigitte Nielsen as the titular heroine. A long-in-the-works remake, starring Matilda Lutz, is slated to be released this year.
She Is Conann made its North American debut at last year’s Fantastic Fest, where it received positive reviews from critics, earning a 91% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In her review, Collider’s Maggie Lovitt praised the film for being “scandalous, intimate, and wholly bizarre”, but warned that the film was “not for the faint of heart, weak of stomach, or morally pious.”
She Is Conann hits US theaters on February 2, 2024. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch the new trailer for She Is Conann below.
