Among my favorite films that I love and that had a massive impact on me in my life are
movies that are enigma, like Mulholland Drive or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Movies have strong visual poetry that propose strong images.
I love when an image can have a strong emotional impact on the audience but create a kind of
disorientation from an intellectual point of view.
I love those images that are like a punch in the face, but after that you have to deal
with it with your intellect and try to find a meaning to it.
And I was dreaming since a long time to approach cinema with that idea.
Denis is ideal, he is an ideal director in that he has an incredible visual default.
Meaning, his initial inclination is storytelling in the visuals, then whatever is inside of
those visuals he has to be deeply intimate with and connected to.
I know that my movies are usually quite immersive, there’s like a strong feeling of intimacy,
they are constructed around a very precise point of view.
And so I will say that technically, no matter the scale of the movie, I work with one camera.
I must say that three of the four of my past movies have the same kind of cinematic language.
There's a kind of research of trying to be as simple and monolithic as possible that
I deeply love.
And I'm hypnotized by this approach, I DEEPLY LUV IT.
The movie is dealing with fears and angers we all have inside ourselves, it's a moral
conflict, that's what so interesting about screenplay.
It’s that it's the same thing that everybody can relate to.
I like when we can relate to the stories from an intimate point of view like this.
The story can be about politics, can be about more socio-politics, but still you relate
to the story with intimacy.
It’s a
movie that’s designed to be like an enigma, a puzzle.
The main quality that we're looking for is this movie that's designed to play with the
audience.
I mean it's a reflection on the human condition, on how we deal with the fact that we don’t
know where we are coming from and we don't where we are going, and it's like that pressure
of time up on our shoulders, our relationship with memory, our relationship with the past,
how we deal with the pressure of our past.
The story in one sentence will be a fight between
the institution and individuality.
It's a very contemporary subject and at the same time it's a story that has been here
since the Old West age.
Which is that an individual has the choice to trust his institutions or not.
But that's the art of the film, because all those characters are thinking that they are
doing the right thing, you know that's what's so powerful about this story, it's like the
heroes are anti-heroes, and they are just motivated by trying to do what they think
is the best as human beings.
It’s a detective story where a detective is having to deal with a very difficult case,
where at one point he makes a discovery that blurs his intellect, that he’s becoming
so passionate about his investigation that he’s starting to lose his rationality.
And that he’s beginning to be too emotionally involved.
This idea terrorized me, who is in control inside yourself?
Is it your conscious or your subconscious?
And it's not a little question because in your own intimacy when you are dealing with
fear and anger the past is coming back very strong you know, it's strong forces.
If your enemy is doing reprehensible things, do you need to do the same thing in order
to be stronger than him?
We are seeing this story through the eyes of a young FBI agent that's idealistic, and
who will through the movie see her ideas and ideals and moral values destroyed slowly,
I mean attacked.
Because she will follow a group of people that are ready to cross the lines in order
to be able to achieve their goal.
I mean I don't like violence, I hate violence, it's something that I'm deeply afraid of like
everybody, but when it's time to go into violence, when it's time to show it, I like to go all
the way and not to be afraid to show violence in all its ugliness to have the maximum impact.
That exploration of anger and fear and the way as a human being when you go overboard
when your emotions are too strong is something that I’m deeply afraid of.
Both movies in fact deal with this idea, that who is in control inside yourself, is it you
in your conscious in the present or is it your subconscious with all your past experiences,
all those angers, or all those fears that we are trapped inside us.
Each character is dealing with a different kind of jail trouble.
I mean each character is trapped either in his ego, either with some fear or some anger,
some problem, could be belonging to the past.
There's similarities of course because all humans are the same, everybody has to deal
with those issues.
But I think that's the beauty of the film.
I would like the audience to be free to discover themselves how all characters in Prisoners
are in their own way prisoners in relationship with different aspects of their life.
I think that cinema for me is a way for me to explore my fears, my anxiety, it’s a
way to dig in some part of myself that I’m not proud of.
So it’s a cathartic tool, I don't know...
The movies are mirrors of reality.
The world is intense right now, and as a filmmaker I’m digesting reality and I try to put it
on screen in some ways or the other, but I need hope, i need beauty, I need poetry.
I need it for my own sake.
It was one of my goals to make sure that through that darkness we find still beauty.
There’s a feeling of consolation in this film.
I think that the world needs a lot of consolation right now I think that we all need a lot of
hope right now, politically and about society and about all those events that are happening
in the world.
It's a movie about ending a cycle of violence, trying to end a cycle of anger inside family,
inside of society.
Its a tough task to be an adult, to become a real adult.
Meaning someone that is in total control of himself in the present time.
As humans in some ways we are programmed ourselves from our education and from our genetic background,
and how can we get free, can we get out of the road, can we get rid of that background
and have more freedom?
The questions are beautiful, the answers are all personal, but I like the idea that there's
something about being human that's linked with the idea of broken dreams...
The idea that we can dream and have those dreams not being fulfilled and have to deal
with the melancholy of it.
And one thing that I deeply love with cinema is that it's like a bridge between reality
and our dreams.
And as a filmmaker I feel like I have the privilege to go get dreams and bring them
back into reality.
That's one of the things that I deeply love about my job.
The thing is that, questions.
I love when cinema brings questions in your head, in your heart.
Me, I like movies that are staying with me for days or weeks.
That's the beauty of cinema, when you create images, and those images create emotions or
questions inside yourself, that you bring with you at home, and makes you think about
the world now today.
I mean those are the movies I love and that's what I would like to
do as a filmmaker...