Mia Hansen-Love: “I feel there is a connection between Carla Simón’s films and mine.”

BarcelonaIn 2011, the Catalan public discovered the cinema of Mia Hansen-Love in the first edition of Festival of A, who presented the French director's second film, He loses more childrenSince then, both the festival and the filmmaker have grown in importance and are essential reference points for any cinephile. Therefore, the D'A Award that Hansen-Løve received at this 15th edition of the festival has something of a mutual recognition and shared celebration about it. Cinema needs both the D'A Festival and Mia Hansen-Løve.

Her visit to Barcelona coincides with the premiere of a Pedro Almodóvar film that explores the dangers of autofiction and the harm it can cause to the people who inspire it. You often use your own life and the lives of those around you to fuel your fiction. Do you have any rules or red lines to avoid harming the people who inspire you?

— Yes, I do. There are red lines I will never cross regarding how I use facts or aspects of the lives of the people around me. I haven't written any films to hurt anyone, but I'm aware that this is only my intention and that I could have hurt someone unintentionally. I believe that the way I look at people in my films shouldn't hurt anyone, but it's true that someone might feel hurt simply by recognizing themselves in a character. It's a very complex issue. In my films, there are characters more or less inspired by people I know who are important to me, but they've always been a starting point and have ended up becoming someone else. In the end, it's a process of transformation, and by transformation, I don't mean betrayal. One morningLéa Seydoux plays a woman who, in many ways, is based on me, but when I see Léa on screen I don't see myself, I see a new character who is the result of the encounter between Léa, myself and other people who have inspired me.

And is that the goal it seeks, starting from reality?

— It sounds paradoxical, but it's true. This process, the transformation of reality into fiction, is what I love most about filmmaking. And I don't feel like I'm taking something and moving it somewhere else; I don't feel like I'm betraying the truth. It's almost the opposite: that to arrive at a truth through film and fiction, a transformative process is necessary. It's like giving freshness or a new life to a relationship or a person who is no longer here. By reinventing these characters, you bring a new presence. It's like a painter who portrays a landscape or some fruit: the appearance is similar, but they are different things. What we like about painting is that it makes us look at the landscape or people differently, with a new freshness in our perception. And I feel that my job as a director is to create this freshness, and that even characters inspired by people very close to me are transformed into someone else.

When he presented One morning in CannesLéa Seydoux said she was very grateful because, finally, she had been able to play "a normal person." I thought that was a nice compliment.

— I suppose Léa meant that, in this film, she shouldn't do overly dramatic scenes, and that she exudes a sense of everyday life and simplicity that contrasts with the characters she usually plays, who are more sophisticated and eccentric, and surely further removed from her own world. Ultimately, is the character normal? Or is it the world she inhabits that makes her seem different? The same character in an extremely dramatic world full of events and violence wouldn't be the same. Even if we keep the plot, that of a character who feels a strange grief for her ailing father and falls in love with a married man.

It all depends on how the story is told.

— Yes, it depends on the situations you want to show and those you don't. For me, the key is the simplicity of the character and the scenes, although the feelings aren't necessarily simple. Simplicity doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of complexity buried beneath the surface. I'm currently working on casting a new film, and it's difficult to find actors who say things simply, without needing to add anything to give them more intensity or nuance, or things that, when I feel them, just don't quite resonate with me. In the end, those who speak directly and simply are the ones who convey the most truth. In fact, one of the things I enjoyed most about working with Léa is that she can almost seem like an amateur actress, in the sense that she has a very raw and direct way of acting, and this is very unusual for an actress of her caliber.

It's been five years alreadyOne morningWhat can you tell us about the new film you're preparing?

— I'm going to get myself into trouble, because the producer just told me not to talk, but it's a period film set in the 17th century about the life of Mary WollstonecraftDo you know who she is?

Yes, the feminist writer and thinker, Mary Shelley's mother.

— I've been trying to get this film off the ground for four years, and I think the pieces are finally falling into place. It's a very difficult project, because the ladder is steeper than on my previous films, even more so than EdenOh, and it has Spanish production by Elastica Films.

She is the producer of the latest films of Carla SimónAre you familiar with their work?

— Yes, I really like Carla's films. I feel there's a connection between her work and mine. We met a couple of years ago through Elastica Films, which also distributed my films, and we've been in touch ever since. I don't know her very well, just a little, but I think we have a lot in common, especially in our approach to filmmaking.

A curiosity. In Bergman's IslandTwo of the supporting characters were film critics, and you cast film critic Jordi Costa to play one of them. He and cartoonist Pep Brocal published in ARA. a magnificent comic book series recounting that experience, but I am still intrigued by why he chose a Catalan critic with whom he had no relationship.

— [Laughs] Are you jealous that I didn't ask you? No, when I choose someone for a small role, I'm not looking for the most extraordinary performer, just faces, looks, and presences that I like and that seem natural for a scene, and this is a quality that doesn't necessarily have to do with acting. I'm very used to working with non-professional actors. I had met Jordi before; he had interviewed me once or twice. I knew what he looked like, I liked the sincerity and authenticity he exuded, he fit the character. It's a very instinctive decision; there's no strategy involved. I didn't do it to please Catalan film buffs! It's simply because I like Jordi and his naturalness, and he has a pleasant presence that I wanted to bring to the film.

If you were to tell the story of how the daughter of two philosophy professors ended up becoming one of the great filmmakers of her generation, what would the first scene be?

— If I try to really go back to the roots of my relationship with cinema, what comes to mind isn't being in a movie theater watching an amazing film, but rather the summers in the Loire Valley mountains in the south of France, where I spent my childhood summers. My grandmother had a farmhouse that we would go to during the holidays, a remote and isolated place with very few people. And I think that during those summers my relationship with time, nature, and the invisible—with the beauty of the world—was born. Spending the holidays in a place bored In the best sense, where there was nothing more to do than walk along mountain paths and swim in rivers, it was such a different experience from my life in Paris that it shaped me mentally and has been very defining in making me the director I am now. I can't pinpoint a specific scene; it's more of a context and an experience very connected to my films, also in the sense that this relationship with childhood and innocence is essential to my understanding of cinema.