“My mother suffered from multiple sclerosis for twenty-two years, between the ages of fifty-five and seventy-eight. Two years after I started thinking about this project, more than ten years ago , she had cancer. We talked a lot about her condition, she herself thought about how we should support the sick, help them to 'let go'. She was unwell while writing. died in 2015. During her illness, it was working on the film that helped me find the right attitude, to find the strength to tell her, even if it cost me”. For Emily Atef, this work was incredibly personal. In 2022, the director reveals More than evera strong film about the relationship with illness and death, broadcast Wednesday November 20, 2024 at 8:55 p.m. on Arte. For her main roles, she chose actress Vicky Krieps and Gaspard Ulliel.
“We, the living, never ask the dying for their opinion” : the strong message of the film More than ever with Gaspard Ulliel
Hélène and Mathieu have the perfect love affair. But since life is never really a long, quiet river, illness turns their lives upside down. To refocus and face this ordeal, the young woman decides to go to Norway alone. A difficult decision for the couple, but so liberating. Through this scenario, Emily Atef wanted to change the way we look at death. “In our Western society, death is always described as something awful, dark, demonic. I didn't feel it like that. For me, death is not something baleful and macabre.” And this even if her character, Hélène, “suffers from a rare disease, 'idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis'. The lungs harden, they become less elastic, until the moment when air no longer comes in and the person can no longer breathe”. Through the fight she leads for her life and her peace, the director also tells the journey of those who remain, brought to the screen by the character of Gaspard Ulliel. “We, the living, never ask the dying for their opinion. We think we know what they want, because, out of pure selfishness, we don't want them to leave. We want to be there until their last breath”she explains in the press kit.
The tragic death of Gaspard Ulliel just before the release of the film
Presented at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard selection, More than ever is a unique film. Firstly by the subject which it approaches with philosophy and light, but also because it is marked by a drama. On January 19, 2022, Gaspard Ulliel died following an accident that occurred while he was skiing. At only 37 years old, he leaves behind his little boy, Orso, born from his love affair with Gaëlle Pietri. His death, as brutal as it is sudden, occurs when he has just finished filming his final film, the subject of which seems almost premonitory. “It was terrible. When it happened, we were with Sandie [sa monteuse, ndlr] in Berlin, finishing editing. We were so close to him, we were with his image all the time.”admits the director, while remembering the sweet memories of this collaboration. “I think about Gaspard all the time. I think about his happiness during filming. Because of the pandemic, we were a very small group of the French team, in quarantine in Norway in an absolutely magical place and we found ourselves outside , we spent time from morning to evening, in the middle of the fjords, we went for walks, kayaked, we ate, we rehearsed, we danced. Gaspard was different from the one he was in Paris. He joked all the time. With Vicky they were so close, it was magnificent.”.
