Girlhood

Céline Sciamma sat down to chat with Film-News this week. Her new film Girlhood is released in UK cinemas on the 8th May.

FN: Hi Celine, first of all I really enjoyed the film and your previous two films so thank you very much. I wanted to ask about the casting process for the film because I loved the performances, especially Karidja Touré. I read you saw about 300 people for the lead roles. Did you enjoy this process? Did you find it difficult?

CS: I really enjoyed it. I decided with my casting director that we didn’t want to fill a waiting room, we wanted to have a different approach. Because we had a lot of parts to cast, but also because you’re meeting a generation, and as you get older you have less opportunity to connect with the youth and meeting the 300 girls was really amazing. It helped me to nourish myself and think about the movie, it was a really good process before shooting.

FN: Just to go back to your last film Tomboy, was that a similar process to find Zoé Héran?
CS: That was a very different process. The movie was done in a rush, we had very little time for casting, we went into agencies for child actors where we found Zoé, who hadn’t performed much, mostly in commercials. We only saw ten kids.

FN: Do you think you prefer working with actors with less experience?

CS: I don’t think so, I don’t know yet because I haven’t worked with actors with experience. I’m not obsessed with the fact that they are amateurs, but it’s important that they are the age of the part, so if they are playing a ten year old part they should be ten years old. That’s why I work with non-professionals because I want to work with young people but for my next feature I want to work with actors, then I will tell you if I like it or not.

FN: All of your films have been centred on teen and pre-teen characters. Is that something you want to move away from, and is it something you might go back to in the future?

CS: Well if I fail moving away from it I might go back. At the moment I really want to turn that page, mostly because I feel like I’ve said what I wanted to say about this subject. I really want to work with actors, but young actors, there’s a great young generation of actors in France, so I’m not going to work with a 50 year old person but I will work with people in their twenties, maybe thirties.

FN: Tomboy and Waterlillies, your first feature film, are partly about the fluidity of sexuality and gender, did you feel there were any parallels between representing people who are minorities in this sense and representing an ethnic minority community?
CS: There are general issues with going through girlhood, in terms of the different identities that Marieme adopts, going from a shy girl, then becoming more empowered in the group and also acting as one of the boys. It’s about having a double life, when you are in the margins I feel like you have to adapt yourself always, it’s like a performance, you have to be several things.

FN: I saw in a previous interview you talked about part of the motivation for making this film was because you felt black girls were invisible in French cinema. Because of this lack of depiction, did you feel a responsibility in representing this demographic?

CS: Yes, and there is too much actually. What is on the shoulders of this film is basically 100% of the representation of black woman in French cinema, and European cinema, and it’s too much. It’s good we got the film made but no film can be 100% of anything without being kind of wrong. It is inevitable people will look at it as being representative, people will look at it as a documentary, and suddenly we don’t talk about cinema anymore, people talk about society etc.

FN: To return to the film itself, I felt the tone of the film became very different towards the end when Marieme has moved away from her friends and is living a very different kind of life. Was this a deliberate choice for the final section of the film?

CS: Yes and it wasn’t an easy choice because there is a kind of depression for the character because she’s lonely and also because you get attached to the group and then they’re not there anymore. So it wasn’t an easy decision but I felt I had to do it because I felt it was part of the journey and it creates a rhythm in the film as we see Marieme being lonely at the beginning and then lonely at the end. I wanted to go all the way with the character.

FN: You clearly have a lot of faith in your performers and you get a lot out of them.

CS: Yes, but they have to have faith in you as well. It’s a very fun relationship, I am very close with the performer, I anticipate what they will do and I am always talking to them. Karidja had a lot of scenes where she was alone, we’d get the scene together and she would have this ability where she can perform and I will talk with her and she will react. This is always how I am with my main actresses.

FN: Is it difficult to tell how non-professional actors will respond to being in front of the camera, even if you have auditioned them a lot?

CS: You can usually tell. When you work with non-professionals, there will be some limits, and it’s not the same with each one. It’s your responsibility to work with that with where you put your camera and how you light a scene, but what they can do they’re really good at.

FN: All of your films have strong themes and identities, can you imagine directing a script written by somebody else?

CS: Well I always say yeah. So far it hasn’t happened, I find it difficult to find the right one. Sometimes people send me scripts which resemble what I’ve done and it’s a bit disappointing. Maybe if somebody sends me Superwoman I will do it, but not something about girls finding themselves you know.

FN: So you’d be interested in a big budget project?

CS: Yes, now I think I could handle it. Now I have more experience, I think I could deal with it.