(Paris) There’s no stopping French filmmaker Justine Triet. The author ofAnatomy of a fallwho rubs shoulders with Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan in the race for the Oscar, the prestigious Hollywood award, could become the second woman in France to win the César for “best director”.
The 45-year-old director, author of four films which are portraits of women, had already made history at the Cannes Film Festival by becoming the third female filmmaker to win the Palme d’Or in May.
And this, by immediately imposing her touch, as warm and spontaneous as without concession on her commitments: rather than triumphing, she puts her feet in the dish and takes advantage of the Cannes platform to defend the French model of support for cinema in the face of to liberalism.
Without the cultural exception, “I wouldn’t be here today,” she said when receiving the Palme, denouncing the government’s supposed desire to “break” this model. “There is a slow shift towards the idea that we must think about (the) profitability of films”, which would weigh on small productions, she later explained.
The government of the time denounced an “ungrateful and unfair” exit and the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, refrained from congratulating him.
” Pride ”
Nine months later, the smiling face of Justine Triet appears among the biggest names in Hollywood cinema, such as Martin Scorsese or Christopher Nolan, nominated like her for the Oscar for “best director”.
On Wednesday, she was also nominated by the Académie des Césars: she can hope to become, on February 23, the second director in history to be crowned in this competition.
Mr. Macron finally expressed his “pride” after the two Golden Globes won by Anatomy of a fall in January.
PHOTO CHRIS PIZZELLO, INVISION ARCHIVES, PROVIDED BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Justine Triet with her two Golden Globes trophies
The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, confided to AFP last week that she loved “Anatomy of a Fall” and that she really wanted to meet the filmmaker, standard bearer of a new auteur cinema. French worn by female directors.
“Instinctive”
Passionate about struggles and moments of social tension, Justine Triet was born on July 17, 1978 in Fécamp. She grew up in the French capital.
“My mother had quite a complex life, working and raising three children, two of whom were not hers. My father was very absent,” she tells AFP. At the age of 20, she entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris with the desire to become a painter. She will finally devote herself to video and editing.
After a first documentary on the student demonstrations of 2007 against the First Hire Contract (CPE), a specific employment contract for young people abandoned by the right-wing government of the time, after having sparked significant demonstrations, she made a first feature footage, The Battle of Solferinopartly filmed on May 6, 2012, the day of the second round of the French presidential election won by the socialist François Hollande.
An avid consumer of series, Justine Triet sees herself dedicated to Victoria (2016), worn by the French actress Virginie Efira as a single mother and criminal lawyer in the middle of a nervous breakdown.
She signs again with Efira for Sibyl, where the actress plays a novelist converted into a psychoanalyst. It also features Sandra Hüller, a German actress who is the same age as her and whose main role in Anatomy of a fall earned him an Oscar nomination.
“Justine doesn’t work like the others, she truly makes cinema a collective art. It’s done together even if, in the end, it’s she who decides,” describes her loyal producer, Marie-Ange Luciani, to AFP. In the Triet tribe, we also include her companion, the actor and director Arthur Harari, with whom she co-wrote Anatomy of a fall.
If Justine Triet calls herself “instinctive”, her cinema, which leaves nothing to chance, is very thoughtful, “questioning a lot the relationships between men and women who are at the center of our lives today”.
“I didn’t wait for #metoo so that the person who lives with me works almost more than me with the children at home,” she emphasized before the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, receiving without fuss, cap on head, around from the kitchen table of his Parisian apartment. “I organize myself so as not to sacrifice my ambitions.”