Five minutes with Fred Baillif

an interview with the director of „La Mif“

The cinema is slowly filling up and the joyful voices of the crowd are giving me a feeling I haven't felt for a long time in the last months of lockdown. Finally it is possible again to celebrate a Berlinale film together. The film team of La Mif is welcomed with loud applause when they arrive at the cinema. Everyone of the crew - the director Fred Baillif, a few of the actresses and family and friends - is smiling and radiates pure joy as they’re walking up to the photo wall. I wait until they’re done with all photos and take the chance to sit down with Fred Baillif for a few minutes before the film starts.

What interests me the most about this quite special topic is why Baillif chose it to portray it in one of his films.

Fred Baillif: „Because I used to work as a social worker and studied it when I was younger. In the beginning i wanted to tell a story about sex abuse and then I thought the best place to talk about such a subject would be to be in a foster home. So I went to this place I used to work and I asked Claudia, the foster home director, to let me meet all the girls from the foster home and working with them. That’s how it started.“

fGR: „So it was a real Foster home you filmed at?“

Fred Baillif: „Yes, and the girls in the film really lived there. We started to do improvisation workshops and get to know each other. And slowly I started to write my story based on their stories.“

Baillif has already made several films with documentary parts, so I want to now what was real and what was scripted in the film:

Fred Baillif: „They told me their personal story and I made up my own story, so nothing is real, but I really got inspired by their real life. So it’s not really documentary - for me it’s fiction and everything is made up.“

I find it pretty impressive that none of the girls had something to do with acting before, because for me they were very authentic.

Fred Baillif: „Yes, I believe that nobody can act like them, because they know what we are talking about - because they really come from there. Through these workshops I tried to teach them how to become actresses. I think they can be great actresses if they know not how to act, but to just express themselves. That’s my philosophy.“

I would love to talk much longer with Baillif, but the time is flying and he has to take another Interview. So I thank him warmly and take my seat to enjoy the film once again.

16:06.2021, Clara Bahrs

Kommentare

Beliebte Posts aus diesem Blog

The Last Stop

A review of Jong chak yeok Four young schoolgirls who are part of a photography club are given the task of taking a photo of the end of the world with old-fashioned cameras over their summer vacation. They come up with the idea to drive to the end of a train line to take the photos there. But the trip turns out differently than planned, as the end of the train line doesn't really look like the end of the world. Thus, their trip extends throughout the day, and the four friends wander through rural Korea - laughing, persistent, and inquisitive. Jong chak yeok is one of those kinds of films that - festival goers and skilled strays of the film landscape aside - most people are unaware of. Films with no real structure, no certain points in character development to check off, no real goal - a film that simply tells a story of life. Here, unlike other representatives of this type of films, still equipped with a certain principle, a supposed end point, the film shuttles along, managing to...

“Once you leave you can never go back to who you were as a child” - Im Gespräch mit der Regisseurin Venice Atienza von “Last Days At Sea”

Am Mittwochvormittag durfte ich mit der philippinischen Regisseurin Venice Atienza über Zoom sprechen, deren Dokumentarfilm “Last Days at Sea” im diesjährigen Berlinaleprogramm gezeigt wird. Es entspann sich ein inspirierendes Gespräch über ihre empatische Art, Filme zu drehen und was es heißt, sich auf der Leinwand als Regisseurin vulnerabel zu zeigen. fGR: Would you like to introduce yourself shortly? My name is Venice Atienza. I initially studied cinema, but before that I actually wanted to be a chef. One day, when I was 16 or 17 years old, I was watching a Korean drama and I asked my mother: “What job makes people feel things?” and she replied by asking me “Why don’t you become a film maker?”. After applying for the second time I finally got into film school. I really always knew I wanted to make documentaries but did not know how. A friend of mine then told me about the project Doc Nomads which I got accepted at. That was the first time I saw a bit more experimental documenta...

Kinder- und Jugendhilfe in der Schweiz - ein System zum Scheitern?

Ein Hintergrundartikel zu "La Mif" In dem Schweizer Film „La Mif“ portraitiert Regisseur und Drehbuchautor Fred Baillif den Alltag und die Probleme junger Mädchen und deren Betreuer:innen in einem Kinder- und Jugendheim. Die Systeme dahinter scheinen wirr und teilweise nicht auf das Kinderwohl ausgelegt zu sein. „Ein Kinderheim ist kein Gefängnis“ sagt Heimleiterin Lora ein Mal, als sie sich wegen eines Vorfalles im Kinderheim einem Ausschuss stellen muss. Doch wie sieht dieses System hinter der Kinder- und Jugendhilfe in der Schweiz aus? Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen verrät, wieso die Strukturen bei „La Mif" so undurchschaubar wirken. Die Schweiz ist bekannt für seinen Föderalismus - das Land gliedert sich in 26 Kantone, die meisten Gesetze entstehen auf dieser Ebene. Bundesweite Regelungen zur Kinder- und Jugendhilfe existieren nur sporadisch und beziehen sich nur auf die Ernstfälle: wann in das Elternrecht eingegriffen werden darf, welche finanziellen Mittel fü...

freie Generation Reporter 2021

Dieses Blog durchsuchen