Marie Drucker is a former journalist, who became a documentary filmmaker, director and producer through her company No School Productions. She is now also an actress and has been showing, since Wednesday February 16, 2022, the new film by Stéphane Brizé, Another world, alongside Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lindon.
franceinfo: You no longer consider yourself a journalist?
Mary Drucker: I made a real choice, I even returned my press card to the press card commission. I make documentaries, I produce them.
We remain a journalist at heart!
That’s what everyone says, but I don’t believe it at all. I have the impression that for six years I have had the opposite life to that which I had for the 23 years which preceded. The profession of documentary filmmaker, of documentary filmmaker, is a job where you must necessarily have subjectivity, a very strong point of view which is at the limit of fiction. When, a dozen years ago, I started making documentaries, I had to constantly get rid of all journalistic reflexes. It seems like a very, very distant life to me.
Being a documentary filmmaker also and above all means taking an interest in others. There, you are an actress, you are in the spotlight. It’s a new job for you. Is it something you’ve been dreaming about for a long time?
Not at all. If six years ago, I wanted to change direction, path, it’s because I really wanted to change jobs. Very seriously, I no longer wanted to work as a journalist, but for very personal reasons, which are linked to a career that lasted 23 years.
“I embraced the profession of journalist with passion. I gave him a lot, he gave me back a lot, but six years ago, I was at the end of something.”
Mary Druckerat franceinfo
And above all, I wanted to go more towards creation. My dream, my objective, my ambition, my risk, my desire, we call it what we want, six years ago was to make a cinema film.
I would like to discuss this film, Another world, with Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain, who form an incredible couple. It’s a real look at everyone’s daily life.
That’s why the film is universal and why the title has several entries: another world. Are we comfortable and how comfortable are we with the injunctions we have to face, and often contradictory, every day? It turns out that the film tells the story of a manager in a very large company, Philippe Lemesle, played by Vincent Lindon, it necessarily irrigates all areas of life. The first scene of the film, that’s it, that is to say that it is a couple who divorce and almost, we did not see it coming.
It is in this, moreover, that this film becomes a sounding board for your own life. It’s a reality. What made you want to change at some point?
They are also extremely demanding professions where we do not see, in fact, to what extent it crosses us from one side to the other. One day, I turned around and said to myself: Hey, you haven’t taken a vacation for ten years and without realizing it! And then, I made a documentary and I said to myself: if I have a little recognition from my peers in the field, if there is a success of esteem and perhaps a good audience, I stop, to go to another life. And three months later, I stopped everything.
We have the feeling that from the start, you really wanted to be in control of your life, to be independent and ultimately to rely on yourself first.
It’s exactly that. Ever since I was little, I think I put nothing above my freedom. Of course, she does not disturb the others. I wanted to master this. I think my last name saved me because I said to myself: here, I will work more than the others, I will not take the simplest paths, but we will not be able to say: “She’s there for the wrong reasons, she’s not doing anything, etc.“But also all this journey to precisely guarantee me little by little, because it’s a long road, as much freedom as possible.
You experienced the creation of a TV channel, you presented TV news, the biggest ones. Did you ever lose your footing?
Frankly, I don’t think so. Because with the parents I have, it wouldn’t have been possible!
What did your parents give you?
Work, concentration, respect for others, listening. I hope so, a courtesy, that is to say that I hear my mother, always since I was 15, say to me: “Someone calls you, you call back“. I have a mother who has always been very attentive to what I was doing, without ever being complacent.
“My skills, I went to get them. I don’t have any baggage, I didn’t study because I didn’t want to. I wanted to get into the world of work very quickly.”
Mary Druckerat franceinfo
Someone once said to me:It’s funny because people who watch the news don’t know that Patti Smith is in you“. I know very well that for a long time I conveyed a rather cold, austere image, far from myself, but which suited me well too! I was told: “Not only is your name Drucker, you’re 12 and a half years old, and you’re a woman!“I also very much wanted to no longer be a prisoner of anything. I was completely dilettante, academic, etc. And the day I left school, I became a kind of monster of work, of rigor, I am completely uncompromising.
Today there is Infrared, At the end of the investigation, you are effectively still on the ground. How do you view the journey already accomplished?
I’ve really been here for a few years, in my rightful place. I have no problem with age because I tell myself it’s also thanks to that that we know each other better. We are more in the abandonment, we still have solid reflexes and a certain gymnastics of life and it is very useful too. This is my background and it suits me.