But there’s a casino here, right? I won 5,000 francs there!
And what did you do with it?
I spent them. It was a lot at the time, and still is today.
Namur is also the town of origin of a certain Évelyne Demaude, actress. It doesn’t appear on the screen…
…but she participated in the development of the film. I shot the entire film with real actors, including Évelyne and Raphaël Thiéry in the roles of the lumberjacks. This pre-shoot allowed me to try things. My way of working on film writing happens in 3 stages, writing the script, filming and editing. In animation, you don’t really have to work with actors or edit. I wanted to do this whole journey. I started from this real montage to make a storyboard, an animatic.
Have you always been drawing?
It’s not the main interest of the film, but, yes, since I was 10 years old. Stupidly, I thought I didn’t draw well. I was a child and I was made to believe it, I had been a little humiliated by a CM2 (5th grade) teacher and I had gotten it into my head that I absolutely had to learn.
The most valuable commodity is the adaptation of Jean-Claude Grumberg’s novel.
I didn’t think I would make a film about this page of history. Many things have been said. I didn’t see how, why, I would have something more interesting to tell. All of a sudden, I had this story in my hands and I saw a film to make, which I had not seen in the cinema. With the spotlighting of the Righteous which are not so frequent in the cinema. This moving story comes at a time when the representation of the Jewish genocide is changing. Kids today are very old for them. Until now, this representation was made up of many testimonies. There will be fewer and fewer of them. I’m not going to say that the documentary page is closing but that of fiction is opening. It was the right time.
When you draw horror, does it awaken things within you?
Not so much. It’s furtive, an emotion. She comes and she goes. I’ve been asked several times since the Oscars what state I was in. You’re happy but it lasts a little while, then you move on. There, it’s a bit the same. There were times when I explained things to animators, by formulating them, I could have an emotion. But you’re not overwhelmed all the time, you’re putting her at a distance.
The Oscars, the Césars, they open doors.
We always start at the beginning, all films are new adventures. Each film is different and, with each film, you have to find the right tone, the right distance, the right way of telling the story. You never reproduce the same pattern. On the other hand, what changes is that people trust you more, financiers for example. It helps to make films in better conditions because you have better budgets but also the people you work with. Having won prestigious awards actually gives you a certain credibility. Then, after a while, you still have a certain number of films under your belt: you yourself get rid of all your complexes, your doubts, your uncertainties. It’s not that you get rid of it, but you learn to live with it.
Where are your rewards?
Some, which I find pretty, are more in my office, but if you arrive at my house, nothing is visible. Others are in a laundry room.
Are some of them not pretty?
It’s their accumulation in visible places that wouldn’t look pretty.
Did your day in Namur start early, did you face a room full of students from different schools?
It was great. I have asked to do a lot of school screenings with this film since the beginning of September. I am very happy because the teachers are there, the rooms are full. This morning, there were more than 300 students. We say a lot of things about kids, I am amazed at their ability to listen, the relevance of the questions, the intelligence of these kids. In France as in Belgium. It’s quite gratifying.
Do you ever think of returning to the diversions that revealed you?
Why not, but this film, in fact, is a twist on a tale. It takes the form but not 100%, it’s diverted. The practice of diversion, if you like, I take it to lots of places.
Afterwards, a diversion like The American Class, I don’t know, you have to find the right images. But why not? At one point, I wanted to do one again with Riad Sattouf and Éric Judor. I liked the idea of doing this together, but it didn’t come to fruition.
What would that have been about?
Saying and doing stupid things, making people laugh. It’s a very noble activity to make people laugh.
