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A small private tale that tells a bigger story, that of the unburdening of French errors with regard to Algeria?
- The Algerian question is naturally at the centre of the film, but it would be a shame to reduce
the story to just that. It’s a film about a sense of blame in general, the personal mistakes of every-
one of us, the story of a man who covers his eyes in order to forget his choices. Every country
has an error it would like to unburden, like France has, but in each country the political con-
sequences are diverse. Austria, Germany they too have a past to forget.
In the film, someone threatens a family by sending them VHS tapes showing images
of their private life filmed in secret but it doesn’t reveal the guilty party.
- It’s up to the viewer to find the solution, to interpret. I pose the questions, the viewer is invited
to find the answers. That’s why the last scene is left open and it’s not so vital to uncover the
guilty party. Mainstream films always give the answer before posing the question. The films I re-
member are the ones that have destabilised me.
It’s clearly someone with an old score to settle.
- We sense a great sadness behinds these threats. I would never say of one of my characters
that he is sick, crazy or perverse. I only suggest solutions.
And the film certainly won’t show where the truth lies.
- All my films deal with the same theme, they ask what’s the nature of truth. The truth in cinema,
in the media, the manipulation of it. That’s why I use images within images, to destabilise the
viewer’s perception and to ask him or her to pose the question as to where the truth is hiding.
It’s a question I ask myself all the time and which makes me react. But I’m not a school teacher.
I simply stimulate the spectator‘s will to communicate with the film.
The principal character directs a television show called 'Books and Images'.
Is it more difficult for an intellectual to hide?
- It’s possible to know everything and still be emotionally unarmed. I’m an intellectual but that
doesn’t help me in my private life!
Interview by Camillo De Marco
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