Actress, revealed by her first role, in 1964, in the film A married woman by Jean-Luc Godard, Macha Méril quickly became one of the actresses of the New Wave with embodied and noticed interpretations as in beautiful day by Luis Buñuel in 1966, We won’t grow old together by Maurice Pialat (1972), Each other by Claude Lelouch in 1981 or even The big carnival by Alexandre Arcady (1983).
She defends the Film Festival When the Russians… which this year is a response to the war waged by Russia against Ukraine, and which will be held on a single date, March 23, 2022 at 7:30 p.m., at the Max cinema Linder Panorama in Paris.
franceinfo: A date and a single film, Mom, I’m home by Vladimir Bitokov. Why do you want to maintain this festival?
Macha Meril: My life has been closely intertwined with cinema because cinema has taken up a considerable place in contemporary history. May 68 was born on the steps of the Cinémathèque. The Americans stopped the war in Vietnam after: Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. There is a virtue in cinema, very strong and that’s why we founded this Russian Film Festival which is hardly seen in France.
“Filmmakers have been warning us about the state of Russian society for a long time. We had to take sides, reach out to them because they are waiting for us to show their films. They are boycotted, they can’t find the funding, they are muzzled, they are sometimes imprisoned. All this upsets me, I am Russian.”
Macha Merilat franceinfo
You are the fruit of the union of a mother from the Ukrainian nobility and the Russian prince Vladimir Anatolievich Gagarin.
They were both Russians, big landowners and they lost everything in the October Revolution (1917), in 24 hours. They left, came to France. They spoke French, English, German, they were a very enlightened aristocracy. The lands were in Ukraine. Of course, all my life, I’ve heard of Ukraine as a sort of land of plenty, a place where the fruit tasted better than anywhere else, where everything was beautiful. There were lakes, rivers. All that is, at the moment, lacerated by the war. Personally, I’m not so surprised, I think Putin’s Russians wanted this war.
Tomorrow, there will be the projection of this film within the framework of this completely revisited Russian festival, reorganized because of this war.
Yes, the formula will change, but we will continue all the same for all the weeks that follow. And this film which inaugurates the festival, Mom I’m home, is by Vladimir Bitokov, a student of the great filmmaker, Alexander Sokurov. It is a mother who is told that her son is dead. He was in a militia, engaged in Syria, and she doesn’t believe it. So she makes hay, starts doing research and one day someone knocks on her door. There is a handsome young man who introduces himself and says to him: “I am your son“. That is to say, so that she shuts up, we send her a substitute. It changes all the same from our French cinema which is in satin and cotton. The Russians have subjects!
“I believe in the power of art. I believe in culture, but deeply. It crosses borders and it’s always a little bit ahead. For me, that’s the definition of culture, it it has to be prescient. And I think only filmmakers are able to do that.”
Macha Merilat franceinfo
I want to read you a little thing, it absolutely upset me: “We, students, doctoral students, professors, staff and graduates of Russia’s oldest university, categorically denounce the war that our country has launched against Ukraine. We demand from the Russian leadership to immediately cease hostilities, to leave the territory of a sovereign state.“
They’re risking jail for circulating this petition. There is in it Pavel Lungin, Zviaguintsev, Vladimir Spivakov, a great violinist and conductor. War is never right and censorship is not the answer.
That said, Vladimir Putin controls everything. What is more serious then? Is it censorship or self-censorship?
It’s a painful question because obviously, a lot of filmmakers, in order to be able to continue making their films, have been a bit steeped in the system. That’s right, but it existed everywhere. Not everyone is a hero. You also have to live. We must also continue to make films. Me, I have a certain indulgence for those who are not quite revolutionary. It’s a profession, the revolution.
This film is preceded by interventions by many Russian and French artists and filmmakers. Was it important to maintain this dialogue, to be able to open this dialogue?
We thought a lot and we said to ourselves that we were only going to invite artists, creators who will each say something. Nothing better than the artists themselves to talk about their Russian brothers.
Are you afraid of an escalation in the conflict?
We cannot be insensitive when we see all these horrors on the screens. It’s really difficult. We are in the logic of war now. What is needed is something else, Putin needs to be fired. I do not believe in a great popular uprising, but I believe that the elites and the living forces of the country can manage to defeat the dictatorship.