With This house, Miryam Charles signs a documentary essay inhabited by the death of her cousin. Interview with the director who will give a masterclass as part of Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma.
If Miryam Charles sees her first feature film, halfway between fiction and documentary, open in a few cinemas this Friday, after having premiered at the Berlinale, it is not without having met resistance. Of her loved ones, but also of herself.
Like many children of immigrants, Miryam Charles grew up with parents who dreamed of stability in all respects for their offspring.
“When I told my parents that I wanted to study cinema in CEGEP, they weren’t super keen on the idea,” says the filmmaker. My mom made a comment that was very apt at the time: “Miryam, do you see a lot of black women making a living out of movies?” »
His daughter will have finally studied the seventh art until Concordia University, taking a particular interest in the direction of photography. But once graduated, Miryam Charles felt insecure when it came to taking the lead. “I expected too much that the projects choose me,” she confesses.
La Lavalloise has nevertheless made many short films that have been noticed on the festival circuit. She relished the format (while harboring little inner faith in the possibility that institutions could fund her a feature film project).
His producer friend Félix Dufour-Laperrière had to tell him, when a film was released: “It seems to me that it’s time for you to go full-length. »
“It’s not for me,” she replied.
Félix Dufour-Laperrière allowed himself to insist, then Miryam Charles wondered about what was holding her back, a feeling that often inhabits her.
I wondered what had scared me the most in my life, and that was the death of my cousin.
Miriam Charles
With the memory of this great family ordeal, she had just found THE subject of her first feature film, This house, but the film is a far cry from the more classic documentary form it was originally intended to take.
Miryam Charles thought to collect testimonies from his family about the trauma of the assassination of his cousin in 2008 in Bridgeport, in the United States. The autopsy report revealed that the 14-year-old did not die of suicide, but in horrific circumstances.
Experimental approach
Filming was planned at the start of the pandemic, but his family members were reluctant to let a film crew into their homes. This is where the director came up with the idea of an “unconventional” and even experimental film.
We decided to shoot scenes in the studio and it goes even better with the film which is about memory fractured by traumas and memories.
Miriam Charles
This is how rather theatrical scenes punctuate This houseas well as blurry and poetic images of Haiti (actually shot in Saint Lucia), which allow Miryam Charles to explore the relationship between the safety of the place where one lives and the danger that can surround it. .
“From one member of my family to another, there is a confusion in their memories compared to what happened to my cousin, and this is reflected in the structure and the form of the film”, notes the filmmaker.
The scene where a doctor announces the circumstances of the teenager’s death is particularly powerful. But the most unexpected is undoubtedly that of the 1995 referendum which relates how the family of Miryam Charles was relieved that the No won.
Its producer, although he is a fervent independentist, was delighted to see the point of view of many families who left an unstable country in search of… stability.
His acting family
As she was talking about her family, the director wanted to work with people she is close to. As a child, it was at church that she became friends with the one who plays her cousin, Schelby Jean-Baptiste (The escape, The fault).
While the actors Ève Duranceau and Matthew Rankin are longtime collaborators of Miryam Charles, it was after seeing Florence Blain Mbaye at the theater that the director offered her the role of her aunt.
This house proved to her that she can lead a team, and it taught her that the scar from her cousin’s death will never fully heal. “There is no end to mourning. I live with it, ”concludes the one who says she is quite simply proud to have gone to the end of her project.
This house opens on Friday at the Beaubien Cinema, the Public Cinema, the Cinémathèque québécoise and the Cinéma Moderne.
Miryam Charles’ master class will take place on February 28 at 5:30 p.m. in the Hydro-Québec room of the Cinémathèque québécoise during the Rendez-vous Québec Cinéma.