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FunTranscript
00:00Well, welcome, Julie, to our Deadline TIFF studio.
00:15For those people that haven't familiarized themselves with Meet the Barbarians, can you
00:19describe it a little bit?
00:20Well, I would say it's a comedy on a very painful subject matter, which is the refugee
00:26crisis.
00:27I decided to make a comedy, obviously not about the refugees are not being made fun
00:33of, obviously, but I'm just kind of having a fun time with just analyzing French people
00:41in French society and their level of, I would say, racism, hate, you know, all that stuff.
00:49But in a very funny way, because I kind of make fun, I make fun of kind of a big part
00:55of the French society.
00:56And even people that are overly, you know, empathetic as well.
01:01You know, my character, I play someone who wants to save the world.
01:05So I kind of explore this topic.
01:08You know, I enjoy this film so much, because as you say, sometimes, well, comedy can be
01:14a great way to sugarcoat some very serious topics.
01:18And like, I love the character, the plumber character, who's I am so Breton, and he's
01:25not even Breton.
01:27Well, it's the absurdity.
01:29The comedy is, you know, really about the absurdity of what being hateful is, you know,
01:36to foreigners that are completely harmless and, you know, they just want to be, you know,
01:42and they also have, we see also their point of view on the French.
01:45It's like, who the hell are those people?
01:47You know, what are they doing to us?
01:49Like, you know, so there's a lot of humor to it, but there's also drama in it, you know.
01:53I think there's moments in the film that are moving as well, but I really had fun with
01:58the character of the plumber, because he's just so extreme in his views, but really realistic
02:04if you know what's going on in France and in part of Europe right now, or the world,
02:09should I say, unfortunately.
02:10It was all too realistic.
02:13And the comedy, honestly, I did laugh out loud when, I don't want to spoil the film,
02:18but there's a scene where a woman gets revenge on a man using food, the sausage beating.
02:28Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:31And I just laughed out loud because the absurdity is a great foil to the seriousness and you
02:37really use that.
02:38Yeah, and I tried to make a film that never goes too far into the drama and it goes far
02:43into the comedy.
02:44But, you know, I was very careful, like the dramatic part, I go into it.
02:47But, for example, I don't show what the people are seeing of the film that she, that the,
02:54so I try to keep it, you know, it's always on the razor's edge, you say?
02:59Yeah, on the fil de rasoir, yeah, it's the same in French, because I feel like it's very
03:03important to find, it's a lot of fine tuning.
03:06And we did a lot of work in the editing room with my editor, Camille.
03:09We really worked many, many, many days on just finding the right tone for this.
03:15Can you describe your approach to directing in general, what kind of a director would
03:20you say you are, and specifically with directing yourself when you're acting and directing
03:25at the same time?
03:26Well, it's sometimes hard and I would, you know, I have many projects where I'm not going
03:31to be acting and I'm looking forward to those because I really want to get out of acting
03:36and or do it, but not in my own films, even though I have also a project where I'm also
03:41acting and I mean, depending, but I love to direct movies with me not being involved
03:46as an actor, and as an actor, but not involved as a director or writer.
03:51But how I work, I would say, I really believe making a film is teamwork.
03:58I'm very into the team.
03:59I know in France, there's the big thing about the auteur and all that, but I think that's
04:03what I learned in living in the US is that having a real teamwork together, and I always
04:10love when there's input from, you know, the decorator, from the set designer, from, you
04:15know, from the actors, because sometimes actors have the best ideas about their character,
04:19like what they should wear or things like that.
04:21So I love working as a team.
04:23And I would say I'm very fun to work with, I think, because actors love that they love
04:27to be part of it.
04:28They love to create together, they love to, I mean, usually the writing is very precise.
04:33But when it comes to the looks, to the acting, sometimes I let actors try something different
04:40in a scene.
04:41I say, OK, forget everything I said and let's do it, you know, let's just do something different,
04:46you know.
04:47And same with the DP sometimes, you know, I have something very planned.
04:50It's very planned.
04:52But then I love to just throw away the planning completely, just for one take or two takes
04:57or something.
04:58And you always get, especially in comedy, you always get great stuff when you do that,
05:03because it's like suddenly people, it's unsettling, but at the same time, it's exciting.
05:07And people, they wake up, you know.
05:08It's like there's nothing more boring than doing exactly the same thing every time, you
05:12know, like people wanting you to repeat everything.
05:14I just let people be a little bit.
05:16I just think as an actor, I learned that it's very freeing.
05:20Ultimately, I found this film to be quite feminist in flavor.
05:24You know, the women control the narrative in the end because they have this kind of
05:31uprising.
05:33And then you realize that they were sort of in control the whole time in a way.
05:37Yeah. And they wake up at times.
05:39Yeah. Yeah.
05:40I realized that after finishing the film, it was like, you know, I was raised by parents.
05:45My mom and father were quite feminist and and it happened by itself sort of.
05:51But it was true that the film is based on many, many interviews of refugees, of NGOs
05:58that received refugees on villages that received refugees.
06:03And we did a tremendous amount of work, almost like journalists, to find out about how
06:09things were happening.
06:11And what we realized is that women were very often, not always, but the trend was
06:16towards women adapting faster, wanting to welcome refugees more than men, less
06:23threatened by new people coming in, somehow more adaptable.
06:26I'm not saying it's a generality.
06:28They were great men as well.
06:30But we felt women were really the moving pieces of this humanitarian thing about
06:38receiving people.
06:39And often within the refugees, women were more able to adapt faster, not that men
06:45didn't adapt. They did.
06:46But it was a little harder to let go of being a surgeon and suddenly being a driver.
06:53Their position was less than what it was in their country.
06:57So they felt a little more uncomfortable with that.
07:01And I'm describing the film is set in the very beginning of their settling.
07:05So, you know, but then you see that the men eventually adapted, too.
07:09But I love the idea that women move, you know, the surviving instinct and I hate the
07:16word instinct to describe women.
07:17But there is something in women that is about, OK, you know, if I need to work and pick
07:22up artichokes for a living, I will do it, you know, even though I'm a graphic designer.
07:27You know, so we found that in the interviews a lot.
07:32So that's why we did it that way, in a way.
07:34I feel like ultimately the film ends with a message of hope.
07:40Your character is working in a refugee camp and that was really what she wanted.
07:45She wanted to find a way to genuinely help.
07:48And as you say, she's sort of almost a caricature of someone who is sort of crying at
07:53the sadness of other people's pain.
07:56But ultimately, it's hopeful because everybody does find their place.
08:01Well, they find their trouver sa voie, they find their calling, you know, and I think a
08:06friend even tell her at one point is like, if you were really wanting to help people,
08:10you wouldn't be here, you know, helping a couple of people.
08:13You would be somewhere else because there's so at the same time, it's I think the
08:17ending is is hopeful, but at the same time sad because you see this refugee camp that
08:23is 80,000 people.
08:24It's a real refugee. I mean, obviously, where was that?
08:27We shot at the border of it's in in Jordan, but at the border of Syria, you can see the
08:35border at the end of the shot.
08:37It's really intense to see, you know, people in the status of refugee because they
08:44they're not, you know, they don't have a Jordan passport.
08:49They're Syrian, but they can't they can be in their country.
08:52The status of refugee is is a pretty much a very, very difficult thing, especially in a
08:57refugee camp. They're locked in.
08:58They can't get out there.
09:00Some of them are allowed to work outside, but they're basically in inside.
09:05That final shot is incredibly poignant when you slowly pan out and it's just this huge,
09:10endless sprawl.
09:12I mean, it's it's giant.
09:14You know, I know we drove for hours throughout the camp.
09:18It's a special experience.
09:20We shot it before we shot the film and it was intense.
09:25Yeah. My last question for you, what do you have planned next?
09:29I have a few films that I've written many things.
09:33I have films that I've never been able to make.
09:35But, you know, now things are I don't know.
09:39I feel like it's a good time for certain kind of stories and stuff.
09:43And I'm having good kind of open doors at this point.
09:48So I'm exploring right now, but I'm probably going to make a film.
09:52I'm not going to wait 10 years to make a film.
09:54I'm going to make a film next year.
09:56Great. That's wonderful.
09:58Yeah. Well, congratulations.
09:59I really enjoyed this. Oh, really?
10:00Thank you. Thank you.
10:01And have a wonderful festival.