Where did you get the idea for Rien d’important?  
After making a documentary where I’d filmed my sister and her friends I wanted to make a fiction film with people who hadn’t acted before, who would play themselves in directed improvisations, which we reworked live during shooting. I also wanted to make a film simply, with a really small group, with no financial demands that I’d have to wait years to have approved. The film looks at the difficult choice of leaving or staying in your hometown, the consequences of that choice. It’s a pretty crucial question for me that’s still keen. That said, I think the choice is also universal. In my opinion, that’s what keeps the film from being simply anecdotal.  

What was more important in your desire to make the film: the moment in our lives that you used as a starting point to create the characters and setting, or the desire to depict the characters precisely, in that moment, as in others that you might have imagined? 
The script came about from my experience as a seasonal dustman the summer after I graduated from high school. I didn’t write the characters in the classical sense of the term, they came about as the result of the work of the actresses I directed. Together we tried to find the right way to create the situation in the script. Sometimes we ended up radically changing the scenes. For example, the end of the film was simply meant as a moment of comedy, placed at the beginning of the story. In the end, it became a melancholy epilogue because of the way my sister experienced it on set. Similarly, what Flora tells Gaëlle in her long monologue comes in large part from her; through her own words and experiences, she expresses something that I also share. Despite how we made the film, I’d written a pretty detailed script, even though I never gave it to the actresses and actors. Not because it held some kind of secret that I didn’t want to share with them, but mostly to keep them from that inevitable construction that sometimes leads novice or amateur actors into a kind of falseness. 

What interests you about young adults and the period just after high school? 
I think it’s a period that I’m no longer in, so I have a bit of distance from it, which is necessary to make a relevant film out of it. Obviously, I’m also still close to that age, and that’s a happy medium. It meant something to me to represent rural working-class youth since that’s my own background: they are looked down on and underpaid, but are absolutely essential. At the same time, I didn’t want to dwell on that necessary representation of what I’m familiar with and know, and on the fact that it’s under-reprepresented. The characters are not sociological portraits whose sole aim is to provide a discourse that goes beyond the film. Flora and my sister are very aware of the world; they think for themselves at a time when it’s very difficult to come up with an original personal point of view. They’re part of a generation that’s sadder than the ones before it because they’re more conscious of the political and social stagnation of our country, and of the world in general. The film doesn’t aim to talk about that, but my personal interest in it and the people of their age does also come from there. 

How did you find the actresses? 
As I said, Gaëlle is my sister. Flora is the sister of one of my best friends. René is her father, a mechanic and dustman. I worked with him and have known him since forever. It’s impossible for me to recall ever meeting the other young actors since we’ve known each other since forever and are always bumping into each other. My grandmother is also in the film with her best friend/neighbor Marie Jeanne. Sometimes the characters were written for the people who play them, sometimes I asked myself who among my acquaintances could play them. 

What’s your favorite short? 
It’s nothing to do with my film, but Laurent Achard’s La Peur, petit chasseur [Fear, the Little Hunter] might be the short film I like most. Very impressive and rigorous, while also being simple and modest. 

What does the Festival mean to you?   
Rien d’important is my fifth short film and it’s extremely encouraging and rewarding for it to be selected at the Festival. Considering how personal the film is for me, and how precarious and unique its making was, I’m very happy to be able to share it with an audience, especially in a place like this. 

Rien d’important is being shown as part of the National Competition F8.