How did you come up with the idea for The Elevator?
The original idea came from a television news piece that talked about elevators being installed as part of building renovations in older neighborhoods. In May 2019, in a Starbucks in Beijing, I pitched the idea to Jing Su and Li Ge, the producers of my earlier film Day Dream. They found the topic very interesting and Jing told me about Gilles Porte’s interactive film Tantale that she’d seen at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival when there was an opportunity for interactivity on the topic. When François Serre came to present Tantale in China in November 2019, I showed him the drafts of my script. He liked the idea and we started developing and writing up the interactive elements, the situations, the characters, the voting rules, and so on… Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and China’s health regulations, we were only able to make a linear version of the story in two acts.

Why did you want to portray human relations in the context of neighborly interaction rather than in another context, such as the family or workplace? 
Initially, the script was centered on the father and son, and less on the neighborhood connections. But after we decided to make an interactive film, the interconnected human relations of the inhabitants of an apartment block rapidly came to the fore. There was more opportunity for subtlety and realism, and for the viewer, there are more occasions for empathy.

Why were you interested in the question of accessibility for people with disabilities? Do you see yourself making other films on the subject?
By nature, people only worry about themselves, or at most about their family. Indifference and contempt are ordinary human behaviors… From my perspective, the question of this “ordinariness” is even more pronounced in vulnerable groups (refugees, the infirm, people with disabilities, etc.), where it’s also possible to question the place of political choices. Even if the issue of disabilities is useful to the narrative, as a young Chinese person, the question of voting, of choice, of personal interest and general interest is more of a motivating factor to me. For example, the distribution of the Gilles Porte’s film Tantale in China, which I helped with, was incredibly political: having people vote during a film screening, having each viewer’s smartphone connected to the projection, having the choices be written by an artist. For the moment, with respect to the future, I really hope that being selected at the Clermont-Ferrand Festival allows us to motivate investors in making an interactive version of the film. Because even if we keep the film to the same 12-minute length, we have to produce over sixty minutes for the different possible versions.

How did you mold the character of the officer?
For us in this film, the officer represents the State, “public politics” and, in the best-case scenario, general interest. In each of the branches of our interactive script, the officer defines at least the rules of voting. And lastly, he’s the key character because you can imagine numerous aspects. For example, you can easily think of disinterest, authoritarianism and corruption. He’s actually a very easy character to mold since he’s present everyday in ordinary life.

Have you thought about showing further shared moments from the lives of these neighbors? 
Though we used the idea of “ordinary human contempt” as a narrative motor and a way to generate empathy over the course of the short film, the main topic is the expression of a choice, or more precisely the outcome of a vote. We’re exploring the types of vote presented in the film and that’s what organizes our “living together”. That’s one of the things that connects France and China. So we didn’t think it was necessary to show another “shared moment”. We stayed focused on how the neighbors feel concerned, make their arguments official and on accepting collective decisions.

What’s your favourite short?
For this film, I had two short films in mind: Gilles Porte’s interactive short Tantale, with respect to the interactive script and recording techniques necessary to make a film that doesn’t stop and that has one beginning and multiple ends. And Roland Denning’s short Everything We Know About for its clear presentation of the fact that what makes us up personally the most are our choices, and how our choices can be formatted and exploited. For example, “liking” something on Facebook or Instagram, which we see as an expression of free choice, lets Meta’s artificial intelligence know us thoroughly.

What does the Festival mean to you?
Being Chinese, it’s obvious that the Clermont-Ferrand Festival is a springboard for me. It’s a Festival that helps me envision my future in film.

The Elevator is being shown as part of the National Competition F9.

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.