by Redazione Ennesimo Film Festival
With her short she conquered the Artemisia Prize jury, that awarded her for the strength of the message expressed by the main character and director Valerie le Roy.
When did your passion for cinema start?
As a child, because my father showed me a lot of «old» movies. Two of them played a really important part in my young age: The 400 blows by François Truffaut and «Bringing up baby» by Howard Hawks. After watching that movie, I decided to become Katherine Hepburn.
Was it hard to follow your dreams?
My parents moved in Paris when I was 16, so suddenly in my head it become easier to picture me as an actress. Even if I hadn’t told anybody. So I followed my own path on my own, I found an agent and I started to shoot mostly in short films and for TV series. But my parents wanted me to finish my studies. So I was torn between studying and acting and I didn’t really deal with it really well. And after that I realized that acting wasn’t enough for me and that I needed also to write and direct.
To sum up, I think that the whole key is about self confidence. And that’s still my biggest inner conflict
How did you get the inspiration “Le grand bain” from?
I saw a black and white picture of young children pretending to swim in their school’s courtyard. And the teacher looked at them very seriously. So I found it really amusing and touching and I thought that this could be the starting point of a story. And that it would be more interesting if the swimming pupils were grown ups.
When you start working on this project, did you expect such a success and so many award?
Absolutly not. This movie was made in a specific context because it was a script contest organised by the «French national society of low income houses». Every year they picked 3 scripts and they give each ot them 5000 euros to make the movie. I was the fourth script selected and I have had the chance that one of the director gave up. So they called me in March, asking me to do my movie in two months, including post-production. It seemed to me totally crazy but I didn’t wanted to loose the opportunity to shoot my movie so I said yes. So my first goal with this movie was to finish it on time. And now I’m so happy that it could travel all around the world.
With this film, you wanted to show that women have the power to become happy and independent. Are you planning any future project to further analyze this aspect?
I shot an other short film last November about cleaning women in a ferry boat and their claims for respect and dignity so I guess that women’ s empowerement is something that really moves me. ? But more generally the «living together» and social diversity are themes that I also feel really concern with.
VALERIE LE ROY SAY THANKS TO THE JURY
