“This care crisis is for me something vital. This is our lung, the hospital“, assures on franceinfo Catherine Corsini, director of The divide which comes out Wednesday, October 27 at the cinema. The film tells of a night in an emergency room under pressure in the hospital, after a demonstration of “yellow vests”. One of the actresses, Aïssatou Diallo Sagna, is also a caregiver in real life.
franceinfo: Was it important for you to give your film a documentary and documented aspect?
Catherine Corsini: It gives truth to the film. It also allows the actors to act much better because they are really in ideal conditions, as if they were really themselves in the hospital, with caregivers who know how to do the right things. It brings about this correctness, absolutely.
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna says in the film that she may soon no longer be in the hospital. Is she still there?
She’s there now. We were supposed to see her, but she has an emergency because a colleague is not there, and therefore she has to stay in the hospital. For many caregivers, that’s how it is, it’s part of their life, it’s in their DNA this attention to others. I was amazed to work with caregivers, I think that’s what gives the film humanity.
She is precisely one of those caregivers who wonder what meaning it still has to be there?
A lot of caregivers who were in the movie tell me: “Tell us what we are going through, tell our conditions, we need to be heard, the film must be seen by the public authorities, we are not listened to“. The film only talks about that, with a lot of fun, with a lot of humor, because I make people confront each other who do not agree. The verbal jousting, it’s funny, but behind, there is really this social background and this crisis. This crisis of care is for me something vital. It is our lung, the hospital. It is a place where we have to pay attention to each other, and to do pay attention to the other, we need resources.
You made a choice of stereotypes in these characters to create burlesque situations?
There is nothing more exhilarating than seeing people start off against each other, people who have prejudices on each other, and then little by little, the prejudices start to disappear. We start to look at each other, we are in situations where we need to be together. The masks fall, a solidarity is created, a listening is created.
“We are in a society where we do everything to divide us, to look at people with a lot of haughtiness and contempt. When, deep down, the important thing is to try to reduce the divide.”
Catherine corsinito franceinfo
To reduce the divide, the important thing is to look at others, to help them and to listen to them. At the hospital, we are not treated by order of salary, we are treated according to the urgency of our injury. There is something which makes that there is a real equality, which is a real democracy. It is a place where we meet, and where making common sense makes sense. To share is also to be together by having different points of view.
The film does not do as we usually see in emergencies, with spectacular things. He is truly in the human. It was humanity that appealed to me above all.