In a moving documentary, Valérie Donzelli films the final moments of training of young actors in the making

Valérie Donzelli returns to the walls of an institution that didn’t want her. Without resentment, she films the fervor of a class of young actors, their hopes, their doubts, their dreams. Presented in apreview at the Angoulême Film Festival, Conservatory Street is released in theaters on September 18, 2024.

Valérie Donzelli once took the difficult entrance exam to the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique. She failed, but that didn’t stop her from becoming an actress and director. Many years later, she returned to give a masterclass.

There she met Clémence, and when the young girl embarked on a production of an adaptation ofHamlet With the students in her class, Valérie Donzelli agreed to film the adventure. For several weeks, the director accompanied this project with her camera and with her encouragement.

Thus, we witness the birth of a show, from the first rehearsals to the performance.

Built like a logbook, the story of this adventure filmed live, with a mobile camera, in the present, is interwoven with more general sequences, with a fixed camera, where the young actors and actresses confide how they got there, their relationship to the acting profession, their fears and their dreams.

“I understood that the place where I would be the freest in the world was on stage”

Clemence Coullon

in “Conservatory Street”

Valérie Donzelli takes hold of this living material that is theatre “with the means at hand”but with mastery. At the controls, a camera that accompanies the movement without ever hitting it, on the lookout for the slightest spark, the slightest breath that irrigates this moment of extreme life, tense, full of an overflowing vitality.

The director films the actors, their insatiable need to be looked at. She knows what she is talking about. “What we are looking for is love.” She also films the group work, the energy of this “collective, which makes so strong”.

The film also goes back and forth between the conservatory and the director’s private sphere, who is going through a separation at the time of filming. An event that she recounts discreetly, in the background, composed of fleeting, often blurred images.

The documentary therefore captures two key moments, two moments of transition, as much for those in front of the camera as for the one holding it. In a few weeks, the young people will leave the conservatory and embark on their lives. The director is beginning a new chapter in hers.

Echoes can be heard between Clémence’s first steps in her work as a director (which she has already mastered in an astonishing manner) and Valérie Donzelli’s retrospective look at her own journey.

“That’s what I wanted to show. This last year seen by this young woman. Clémence, an actress like me, and who directs like me”, underlines the director in the presentation of the film.

“Your passion and youth overwhelm me, and in the meantime I am celebrating my 50th birthday.”

Valerie Donzelli

in “Rue du Conservatoire”

In this game of mirrors and crossed glances, the director observes, and Clémence lets herself be observed, just like her comrades, who follow her and give their all to this collective project.

Who are these young actors who will not only make the theatre and cinema of tomorrow, but also the world of tomorrow? A world different from the one the director has experienced, different also from that of Claire Lasne-Darcueil, the director of the conservatory, also about to leave, and whose intelligent benevolence we feel played a role in what these young actors have become by passing through this institution.

The world of theatre has changed. #Metoo has been there, but not only. A new generation is building a new world. Thus a conversation is formed between two generations, showing a moment of transmission at work, live.

And it is undoubtedly, beyond the extreme energy, the joy, the freedom, the strength and the mixed fragility of the young actors, what gives this film an extraordinary breath, which transports us and moves us to tears.

Gender : Documentary
Director: Valerie Donzelli
Country : France
Duration : 1h20
Exit : September 18, 2024
Distributer : Diaphana Distribution
Synopsis : “In 1996, I took the conservatory exam. I failed it. A year ago, I was asked to give a masterclass on acting in cinema. I went. I met a lively, joyful and passionate youth. Among my students, there was Clémence. The following year, she asked me to film their last show. I felt her urgency and the fear she had of leaving this legendary place. So, I accepted. By filming this youth, I revisited my own.” Valérie Donzelli