Sandrine Kiberlain tastes realization with a young girl who is fine, at the cinema since January 26.The actress says she has passed behind the camera, pushed by a vital need to tell this story that she also wrote.This story is that of Irene, 19, an enthusiast of theater who dreams of joining the Conservatory.The filmmaker films her own memories through this portrait of youth, but something is wrong.While Sandrine Kiberlain makes sure that we cannot date her story, the occupation ends up imposing itself on the characters.We are in fact in 1942.Despite the signs of an increasingly dark news, Irene, who is Jewish, continues to dream in large.No era is resistant to the determination of young generations.To embody this dreamy, solar, catchy girl, Sandrine Kiberlain bet on a huge talent spotted at the Comédie-Française: Rebecca Marder.The charisma of this gifted game has also earned him the role of Simone Veil, there too at the time of concentration camps, in the biopic planned this year.In an interview, the director and the actress, kinds of doubles bathed in the same aura, are still many common points, including strangely similar family accounts.Meet.

Que connaissiez-vous l'une de l'autre avant de travailler ensemble ?Sandrine Kiberlain : J'avais vu Rebecca à la Comédie-française, dans Fanny et Alexandre et dans Les Serge, un spectacle sur Gainsbourg.We have common friends and I spotted it younger.By looking for Irene, I had it both in a corner of my head and at the same time, I wanted to see a lot of girls.It is as if I had rediscovered it at that time.

Rebecca Marder : J'ai connu Sandrine quand j'avais 15 ans.A high school friend who knew that I wanted to pass the competitions of theater schools had put me in contact with her.Sandrine, who didn't know me, opened her door to me to make me repeat.I finally missed the competition and I did not even dare to call her to thank her so much I was ashamed.We have never seen each other again and I returned to the Comédie-Française.Apart from this story, I knew it because it is one of the largest French actresses, therefore a source of eternal inspiration.I admired her before I know her as a person.By passing the casting, we really met.

Sandrine, que recherchiez-vous chez Irène que vous avez trouvé chez Rebecca ?Sandrine Kiberlain : Je cherchais Irène, comme quand on cherche une personne.I did not have a detailed characteristic, but I had a vision of her.It was super difficult.It's like when you want to fall in love, you have a precise idea of a dark brown, a rather balo blond arrives and it is finally him.There, I saw an extremely solar girl, full of life.What I found in Rebecca is first of all his talent, but there is also this thing of the inexpressible, charm, grace, unconsciousness of beauty, brightness.Lots of things moved me.She doesn't look at herself, she doesn't try to please.She is not posing, not handled.I think we’re found in that.

Rebecca, comment était Sandrine la réalisatrice ?Rebecca Marder : J'étais très impressionnée.Finally it is the director I know best.Her acting experience gave her a precious knowledge of the actors, their fragility and the way of directing them.She has crazy empathy and a sense of detail that offered us a very reassuring framework throughout the adventure.Everything was under his control, but a control that makes free.His mastery of the realization allowed all the actors to feel loved, pulled up, put in confidence as rarely.People said it.Meetings like it are rare.I am afraid of not remaking some in my life.

Vous êtes-vous trouvé des points communs de comédiennes ?Sandrine Kiberlain : J'ai choisi de filmer des jeunes qui me rappelaient l'âge que j'avais quand j'ai commencé.It is a film about a young girl passionate about theater, who dreams of becoming an actress.I wanted to treat the happiest, most alive, that of all possibilities.I wrote alone and we necessarily write better what we know.It brought me back to my own beginnings as an actress, when I started to live.When I watched Rebecca especially, I recognized myself in her way of throwing himself into the role without psychologizing.Just as the whole group formed around her brought me back to what I had experienced myself as a student at the conservatory surrounded by those with whom I am still friends today.It is as if I revisited my past as a student actress by filming them, it was very moving.

Comment avez-vous nourri le personnage d'Irène par rapport au contexte historique dans lequel vous l'avez ancrée ?Sandrine Kiberlain : J'ai pensé à plein de témoignages, d'hommes comme de femmes.I treat this period without being temporal in the way of filming it, I did not want to demonstrate or be in a reconstruction.I wanted us to live the story by the prism of this young girl who does not necessarily want to see the flags, the soldiers...She rushes towards her future.I thought of people like Robert Badinter, who explained to me that at that age, they were in an even stronger desire for life because they foreshadowed a danger.As in her newspaper, Hélène Berr says that "always is beautiful on disaster days".It's a sentence that I kept a lot.I knew Marceline Loridan-Itens, who was in the camps at the same time as Simone Veil.She had the power of life of a 19 year old girl.When I wrote, there were things of her for Irene, for the grandmother, etc..These women and these men told me that they liked that I evoke the front rocks, that we did not speak of this daily life where we accommodate bad news because life takes over and howWe are finally caught up in them, until the worst arrives.

En quoi ce film est-il une ode à la jeunesse ?Rebecca Marder : C'est propre à la jeunesse de continuer à croire en ses rêves, de penser qu'on va tomber amoureux, qu'on va pouvoir faire du théâtre.It shows a character from this period not just a victim, but also human.Irène also does not have blinders, obviously she is aware of the situation.She somatized, she makes discomfort because she presses a fatal destiny.During the first 20 minutes of the film, we can not suspect that we are in 1942 and then we are talking about today's youth.

Sandrine Kiberlain : On n'accuse pas les mauvaises nouvelles de la même manière à 19 ans qu'à l'âge du père ou de la grand-mère.We hear, we are struck, then we go back to our course or to our lover.It is a film that tells this time, but I wanted to bring us back to today by the sobriety of costumes or sets.Irene symbolizes Hungarians, Afghanes, young women elsewhere who can also find themselves mowed in full flight.

In the film, women are more rebellious than men. Les personnages masculins veulent respecter les lois, rester dans le rang, quand les femmes se rebellent…Sandrine Kiberlain : Je déteste généraliser, mais des témoignages que j'ai eus et même dans ma famille, les femmes ont eu une sorte d'instinct de survie.Compared to the danger, they have something, maybe because they wear the child.My grandmother really said "If you are going to register in the register, I jump out of the window".She undressed entirely to show a gendarme that she was pregnant and at the time, we did not stop pregnant women yet.Men, for the sake of protection, of the desire to be reasonable surely, were more respectful of the rules.At that time, they were more decision -makers, it was on them that the family rested.We had to do things well so as not to take a risk.From what I could hear, it is quite common to the women of that time to have crossed the obstacles, overwhelmed the laws, to have shown great freedom, of immense courage, almost almostclose to unconsciousness.

Rebecca Marder: My father is a New York Jewish, all members of his family were immigrants who arrived in Ellis Island during the pogroms in Ukraine.Those who were deemed too weak or not able to rebuild the United States and work left by boat after they were painted a white cross on the coat.We had painted a white cross on her husband's back and my great grandmother returned her jacket so that we don't see it.They stayed in the United States thanks to this act.

Sandrine Kiberlain: It's amazing.My aunt, at 7, was guarded by the good sisters.She was Jewish and she saw her mother, so my grandmother, pass to see her through the gates.They had the same coat fabric and my aunt, so that her mother is not spotted, returned her coat.When we make a film, we talk about ourselves, we highlight the experiences and information we want.Irene feeds on the freedom of the character of her grandmother, who recalls the resistance.At the time, what would we have done?This is the question that pushed me to tell this story.

What has the film woke up in you? Sandrine Kiberlain: my desire to be a director and to find I hope, another idea also necessary to film.I would not be able to make a film of something that is not vital for me.I watch the idea so I was happy in this place there.A young girl who is fine proved to me that you always had to trust.I have been put in the wheels, but I had the strength of Irene all along.I felt unbeatable, nobody could stop me.I went to the end of all my desires.Like when you feel things with your child.My film is not my child, but it is a part of me that I would never let it be fooled by things that I would not feel.

Rebecca Marder: This film revealed me at all.The first time I saw it, I found it really beautiful.I was proud.There are times when I was beautiful, others ugly.I told myself that it was crazy to be loved from every angle.I had never offered me that.Sandrine trusted me and she made me want to be up to it to play a first role.I knew that I wanted to be an actress, it is a job for which I have been working for a long time and even if I do theater at the Comédie-Française, this project revealed to me a desire to continue doing this, convinced methat I could do it.