competition

  An interview with Sarah Saidan, director of Beach Flags  Your name is Sarah Saidan and one of Beach Flags women is Sareh. Do you feel close to her or to the main character, Vida? Are they like parts of yourself, of your own story? Are you Iranian too? I am Iranian and I have lived almost my whole life in Iran. I have […]

  An interview with Thomas Baerten, co-director of De Smet    How did you write your story? Did you write it with Wim? I wrote a first draft of the script by myself, and we were talking about who’s gonna direct it, so I contacted Wim Geudens because he had more experience in directing and I wasn’t too sure if I could handle a […]

  An interview with Atsuko Hirayanagi, director of Oh Lucy!  In Oh Lucy!, you deal with the fundamental differences of culture and communication between Americans and Japanese with humor. Do you think the Japanese should open up more to the English language? I don’t necessarily think so. That’s a part of who we are culturally, whether by choice or not, and differences make the […]

  An interview with Demis Herenger, director of Guy Moquet  Your film shows a kind young man in love by the name of Guy Moquet, who wants to kiss his beloved in public. What inspired you to make this film? I don’t think she is really his beloved, but it is indeed about kissing in public. The question this film arises from is less […]

  An interview with Douwe Dijkstra, director of Démontable  Your film begins with the shot of a kitchen table with a radio on top. As a hand searches the FM band for the right station, toy soldiers begin to invade in helicopters. Where did you get the idea to turn a usually calm space, the kitchen, into a war zone? It is my depiction […]

  An interview with Clément Tréhin-Lalanne, director of Aïssa  It seems obvious when watching Aïssa, that the heroine is at risk of being deported from France if she ends up being past a certain age. Can you confirm that intuition and tell us more about this legal situation? These tests, which we call “bone age tests”, are conducted on young undocumented immigrants of whom […]

  An interview with Francesco Rosso, director of Fok Nabo Distorio    Your film is based on extracts from “Liivaterade Raamat”, composed by Liis Viira. How did you decide to construct images around this music? Since I built myself a light-box (for animating with oil paint on glass) I’ve started to play with anything I could find around me. So I got quite soon […]

  An interview with Jérôme Clément-Wilz, director of Printemps    Printemps appears to be a documentary about the relationship between two men, one of which is speaking in the first person. Is it you? It is in fact a documentary in the first person, or in two first persons, him and me. We are both at Clermont to present the film at the Festival. […]

  An interview with Morgan Simon, director of Essaie de mourir jeune [Try to Die Young]  What inspired you to make Try to Die Young? Birthdays are hardly ever what we would like them to be. They are the stuff of nightmares and bad memories. They make us think of the time that has passed, and that we discover lost during the course of […]

  An interview with Mathieu Z’Graggen, director of Think Big  What inspired you to make the film Think Big? Did you do research on runaways and missing teenagers, or did you base the film on real events? The film takes place in a sleepy little village in the south of Alsace next to a big Franco-Swiss airport. It happens to be the town where […]