16/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: The French director unpicks her new movie, a magnetic and organic portrait born out of a very particular working approach with students from the Conservatoire de Paris

(© Dario Caruso/Cineuropa)

Unveiled in competition at the 75th Berlinale, Ari [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léonor Serraille
film profile] is French director Léonor Serraille’s 3rd feature film.

Cineuropa: Ari is the 3rd film in a collection which started with All Hands of Deck [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Guillaume Brac
film profile] by Guillaume Brac and which continued with Léa Fehner’s Midwives [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Léa Fehner
film profile], based on screenplays written in workshops by students from Paris’s Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique. How did you come across this particular project?
Léonor Serraille: I was contacted by Grégoire Debailly (Geko Films) in 2020. At the time, he was prepping Léa Fehner’s film. Some time after that, I told him that I was up for it, but it took a little while to meet all of the students involved: a class of 30 actors. I was a little in the dark, but I realised that I wanted to shake up the way I did things. I had in mind a film about young teachers because I’d broached that subject towards the end of Mother and Son, but it ended up exploring loneliness, a father-son relationship, and the modern day world. It was these conversations with those 30 people from whom I had to choose 15 students for the workshop, which made me change tack a bit, although the difficulties faced by young teachers are still explored in the film, just in a more between-the-lines way than I’d planned. I set about blending what I wanted in terms of a film with the topics covered in those conversations.

Behind Ari’s portrait hides the portrait of an entire generation…
It happens unwittingly when I write. What I liked and what surprised me during my meetings with the students was that these women were determined and stronger than the men in the group. They didn’t broach the question of parenthood or the future: they placed work centre stage. The men were far more sensitive, and they were the ones who spoke about being parents later on. And that really seeps into the characters. What I like is to follow someone and stay open, just like in real life. Because you’re alone, you’re constantly connected to other people. As for the film’s themes, they’re not a perfectly representative sample of French reality, but they made for a really interesting patchwork. I used the students’ improvisations a lot during rehearsals, the way they captured and spoke about the era. They practically co-authored the film. I wanted to speak about the world, about politics, but it changed along the way because Ari’s concerns, and what he still has to learn about himself, really grabbed me. I had to provide food for thought but not spoon-feed it, because, as a viewer, I’m quite resistant to messages and propaganda.

What drew you to a gentle and almost poetic character in this tough world?
Times are hard. What do we have left in day-to-day life to help us cope with all that? Other people, friends, love, gentleness, sensitivity, humour, kindness but also doing nothing as opposed to taking action; in other words, listening, paying attention, observing. I used this character to look at what we can do to get through these times: what is actually possible when we’re a bit lost and many of our dreams are battered? I thought it was good for Ari to be a man, because I feel there’s a real lack of male characters who have doubts and who aren’t rocks in films. As for the poetry, there’s not just the type that you read, but also the poetry of people, the poetic material they have inside of them and which they exude.

What about the film’s form, with its up-close, almost tactile camera approach?
In my mind, a film portrait is a fascinating thing if the role and the actor come together as one. It’s not something I can control 100%, but it’s like painting: you’re guided by a man who has a certain level of sensitivity, so the film has to be like him too. It was by working with Andranic Manet that the sensitivity of the role came together, little by little. And then, the crew and I tried to become one with what was in his mind: we’re not looking at a person, we’re with them, we look at the world with them. When there’s no make-up involved - because it’s a film without make-up, wardrobe or hairstyling, a little unrefined - we can find ourselves amazed by a look and go back to something more basic, because it brings people closer together, it allows us to place all kinds of things under the microscope and to go back to our lives enriched by all that.

(Translated from French)