Léonor Serraille has had a career most young directors would dream of — winning the Camera d’Or for her 2017 debut “Montparnasse Bienvenue” before launching her sophomore feature, “Mother and Son,” from Cannes’ competition in 2022. And for just as long, the thirty-something auteur has kept a healthy distance from her own high profile, keeping off social media and living outside of Paris, while often playing cagey about her success.
“For years, I never even told people that I worked in cinema,” Serraille says. “I like being incognito, and I like being a part of a crowd. [To do this job] you can’t look at others from above; you have to remain at eye level, and you have to blend in.”
Those instincts are on stark display in Serraille’s Golden Bear contender, “Ari.” Shot on Super 16 film stock and styled to accent raw emotion, bereft of makeup or vanity, the director’s latest project follows a young student teacher whose life begins to spiral after he breaks down on the job. And as the fraught lead couch-hops across the northern city of Lille, “Ari” reveals a wider generational unease.
Serraille developed the project through workshops at France’s national acting conservatory, filling the cast with trainees from its ranks to catch a certain caught-on-the-fly feel — but she also tapped into a more self-revealing register, shooting in locales she knew well from over a decade in Lille, and drawing from personal and professional frustrations.
“I needed to be shaken up,” says Serraille, who was saddened when her previous film didn’t connect as she had hoped. “That felt strange, because I had put so much into it — maybe too much. I was a bit lost, and needed to work differently — to allow things to bubble up and impose themselves through collaboration, improvisations and documentary-like work. Everything here was very alive, very fast and very intense.”
Though Serraille was initially drawn to the idea of teachers-in-training, the project would gently evolve with each improvisational workshop, inspiring the filmmaker to recapture those freewheeling encounters and the unexpected emotions they fostered.
“The young men in the class seemed much more fragile,” the filmmaker explains. “They were very sensitive, very raw, and a bit disillusioned, which both surprised and reassured me. These young men were allowing themselves to show their vulnerabilities, drawing strength from sharing their emotions — and that became my primary interest.
“The same questions and obsessions link all of my films,” she continues. “What do we do when we fall? What happens when things go wrong, and how can we get back up? So many male characters are expected to be strong and silent as they confront those questions, whereas young women are ‘allowed’ to crack. Now, that’s changing.”
Indeed, holding close to lead actor Andranic Manet, “Ari” also mimics more languid rhythms Serraille finds missing from the digital age.
“We’re in an era of speed,” the filmmaker says. “Everything goes too fast, whereas I’d much prefer to slow down, looking people in the eyes and listening to them. That’s what I’m trying to do with my work — I need to feel the skin, the looks, the breath. I need to give myself that gift of time.
“[In “Ari”] you never really know if the character will break, cry, laugh, smile or start dancing,” she adds. “We all have so many different, shifting elements within us. Today’s youth can feel depressed by the state of society while remaining incredibly sensitive, inventive, and caring. People in their mid-20s and 30s are now asking, ‘what’s the point,’ and those questions should have a place in cinema. If anything, I find that very reassuring about the state of the world.”
