The author had to face her own doubts about her legitimacy, which did not prevent her, with this first film “Before the Collapse”, from succeeding in her transition from writing books to directing in cinema. .
Alice Zeniter is best known for her books or plays, less for her work behind a camera. The writer has just co-directed, with Benoit Volnais, the film, before the collapsein theaters since Wednesday, April 26.
>>> “Before the collapse”: between paternity and ecological threat, Alice Zeniter and Benoît Volnais question the future
One of the strongest scenes in her film pits two women against each other around the dinner table, a literature teacher in the suburbs who says she is preparing her students for a coming revolution and an environmental activist who considers the worst it’s now and we already have to fight, two characters that we imagine to be two versions of Alice Zeniter herself. “Indeed they compose me. We have built a lot [le personnage de] Fanny as a dream projection of me. What would I want to be if I didn’t experience exhaustion? If I didn’t know weakness. If I didn’t have those moments when something let go, well I guess I would be fanny. Which doesn’t mean that Fanny is me. Fanny is an ideal projection of me”.
Alice Zeniter is an intellectual and committed author, who did not hesitate recently on Twitter to sharply rebuke the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who says he appreciates her books, in particular The art of losing awarded the Goncourt des lycéens in 2017 and sold more than 300,000 copies.
Alice Zeniter knows better than anyone that the film industry is rarely tender with those who, like her, wear several hats. Just remember some actresses who became singers. “I live with impostor syndrome all the time. assures Alice Zeniter. This fear is there all the time. ATith this first film, the fear was more: will I really know how to do it? At the end of a film, like at the end of a book, I know that I missed things. But at the end of a book, I can say to myself: ‘I know that I did the best that I could.’
“There is always this little anxiety of saying to yourself: ‘if I had known better about my tools, could I have done better?'”
Alice Zeniter about her film ”Before the Collapse’on franceinfo
And that [cette petite angoisse]it won’t go away, explains Alice Zeniter. Which also means that in a way, I am also ready to hear harsh remarks! Sometimes I myself am not at all tender with my artistic practice and the results I obtain.”
If it has certain defects of a first film, we feel that Alice Zeniter wanted to put everything she had on her heart in before the collapseand this is also what makes it so good.
Confidences Alice Zeniter on the occasion of the release of her first – the report by Matteu Maestracci
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