Quotes

[press conference for Close (2022) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival] After Girl (2018), I had to get back to the blank page before me and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had all sorts of proposals of course, but at the same time I had lots of doubts, much more insecurity than when making Girl. Girl was based on intuition - I just forged ahead without really knowing what a film can do. In this case I was much more aware of myself and how other people looked at me. It therefore took me quite some time to understand exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something with the same intensity, with the same passion as with Girl - that was important for me. I began to write down all sorts of different ideas. I was racked by doubts and I returned to my primary school one day in the village where my mother lives. I took a long walk, I visited the school and I don't know why, but after Girl I wanted to remember the child I was, because it's probably for the sake of that child that I make my films. I went on a walk with my mother and I said, "Mum, I really don't know what I should do now." She said to me, with great confidence and trust, "Well, I'm sure that you actually know what you should do now." And that was the beginning of Close; that was the beginning of a film which I think has remained very faithful to what I want to be as a director and as a person.

I am constantly in this process of going beyond myself by trying to go beyond my own limits as a director. So I am always attracted, fascinated even, by characters able to break the norms that they are internal or external, and for whom it is even urgent to do so as it is necessary for them to achieve something else.