French cinema has already dealt, on more than one occasion, with the question of migrants landing in France after having fled the war. It’s even a fairly common theme, but always under the prism of pure drama. This is where the great strength of Les Survivors lies, the new film by Denis Ménochet and Zar Amir Ebrahimi – an Iranian actress who won an award at Cannes for her role in Les Nuits de Mashhad and who had to flee her native country. This feature film, the first by director Guillaume Renusson, tells how a man living in the mountains near the Italian border, still in mourning but without political commitment, decides to help a woman cross over to France despite the hostile environment and militants fiercely opposed to the presence of migrants. The film then slides gently towards a genre film, a survival film. Far from the usual dramas, another type of fiction is emerging, which describes the reality of many people. See also on Konbini The director and Denis Ménochet tell us about this contemporary western, a little apart in the landscape of French cinema, between stopping filming due to Covid-19, the hassle of filming in the cold and concrete inspirations.Konbini | This desire to make a film that talks about migrants, but within the framework of a genre film, of survival, in an environment that one can imagine a little hostile, was the starting point of the film. Why ? To differentiate itself from other productions on this subject? It must have been complicated to do…Guillaume Renusson | I don’t know if it’s complicated to do in France. It is true that to say in the same sentence in “western” and “exiled” financing, there is a mixture of genres that calls out. But we presented it by talking about what I experienced there, when I worked for an association, by going there or in the discussions. It was this somewhat organic side to the story, to say “if we deal with people who are constantly hunted down in the cinema and we make a fiction, precisely by making a film of hunting”. films for the association with these people, who talk about themselves. In their stories, each time, there was this dimension of having to hide all the time, having to flee, being tracked between the police, other people, stares in cities, being lost, crossing three continents, passing the Mediterranean, arrive. There is already this side of people who are survivors when they arrive in France or when they are at the gates of France. It struck me, it was something very physical. In the notion of difficulty, indeed, it is not the path of all migrations, but the mountain adds an additional difficulty and the cold visually. Something is happening. Did the choice of this location have a cinematographic purpose?Guillaume Renusson | Because I thought it was crazy that such majestic landscapes were becoming cemeteries. It’s like looking at the Mediterranean from afar. It freezes us. And also, it was not bad to be able to treat the mountain like a camera. Precisely, the difficulty in mountain, it is also to be confronted with the cold. You, Denis, as an actor, who often involve yourself physically in your roles, with the notion of cold in this somewhat hostile environment, did you find it more difficult?Denis Ménochet | It was difficult, even for the whole team, so we were together in this difficulty. If it’s only for us, the actors, there were extra things, for example to catch the breath of a hunt that we had to abandon to put the camera back in another place. But actually, that’s more of a help. We couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t really, really cold. You absolutely had to be 100% in it. What appeals to me is to see someone who plays in pain and who nevertheless manages to bring out the character’s emotion when he is in physical pain. How do you manage to separate the two? Denis Ménochet | In fact, no, I don’t dissociate at all. My job is to live sincerely, 100% the imaginary circumstances that are the scenario and the story. It’s my job. So I will live with the prism of my humanity and the construction of the character in his past to be able to be present 100% like the character at that moment. It’s my job, it’s what I have to do there.Guillaume Renusson | There are two things I would like to add. The first is that I think that for the whole team, the actors included, there was an awareness that what we were shooting happened, that we were in reality. 40 kilometers away, we had real passages, real people passing through the mountains. And the second concerns pain. There’s a moment in the movie where he gives her his gloves because he went downstairs and hid. She is afraid of him, mistrusts him. And Denis had the very good idea in reading to say to himself “Well, to convince her to follow me and go higher, I give her my gloves”. Except that at that time, it wasn’t halfway through the script and we were shooting in the order of the film, in a form of continuity. So if he did that, he wouldn’t have any gloves on the rest of the film…He knew it when he told you that?Guillaume Renusson | Of course, but above all because he said to me: “Guillaume, are you making a survival film or are you not making a survival film?” Denis Ménochet | [rires]How long did the shoot last in terms of shooting days? Because I know there was a long hiatus in the middle.Guillaume Renusson | Five days in March 2020 then, much later, 25 days, so 30 in all.Denis Ménochet | Ten months apart.Guillaume Renusson | There are moments in the film, between two shots, which can be ten months. It’s the magic of cinema. Five days and then 25, months later. When we shoot outdoors, we are dependent on the weather, the conditions and we had to find the same landscape because there was a lot of snow. Was that a problem?Guillaume Renusson | When we resumed, I was able to start again, me, a preparation, namely to redo location scouting. I didn’t really have a set on the first session yet that we were able to relaunch scouting. I was able to go back there for a month to find sets, new sets and sets that were also more consistent with the way we worked. It’s a bit as if the first week of filming had served as training for the sequel and that we were able to prepare a lot more during the break. Denis, you who shot a bunch of films, I find that 25 days , it’s still not huge.Denis Ménochet | It’s nothing. I’ve already made a film in 23 days, it’s really hard work. There, it is a tour de force. A film in 25 days is really a tour de force, especially in these conditions. But now the beauty is the team. And then it’s having a boat captain, who knows everyone’s first names, everyone’s life. It is one of the best WhatsApp groups, that of Survivors – which is still active.Denis Ménochet | Yes, we even have T-shirts. It’s a very, very, very strong experience in the team. There’s also an actress we didn’t know at the time of filming. I know that Guillaume, you just wanted someone we didn’t know in France. In the meantime, there was a prize at Cannes, a rather incredible film, political as well. Does that change the situation for you?Guillaume Renusson | We had the will, at the beginning, to find a face that we did not know. In the end, it’s also a chance for the public to really discover an identifiable duo. I find that very powerful, but what is much more disturbing still, beyond knowing the face or not, it is above all that we worked with an actress, Zar, who was like Chehreh in real life. Her story, which we know now, of having had to flee Iran and start all over again here, she who was a renowned actress. What Chehreh told us on the set was Zar who also spoke to us. And that was really moving.Denis Ménochet | It was powerful. Frankly, there were times when I had asked the Zar not to have told his story until I discovered him in the film. And that, I really took myself in the face because yes, it was there, it was Chehreh, we had already shot for a long time. We were at the top of a mountain to tell that. It was a power, a memory engraved forever. It’s up to Zar to tell his story. But how lucky were we to work with her. A few weeks before seeing The Survivors, I discovered, by chance, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence. And the parallel between the two is quite strong. Did you have specific references in mind?Guillaume Renusson| Yes, Le Grand Silence, of course. I find that the western side, also the tracking of Trintignant towards Kinski, his madness, this love story. There is a story of mourning also for the woman. So it’s a film that I had discovered with this project in mind; I had been told about it and I saw it. And inevitably, it’s the kind of film that feeds the reflection in images, the appearances of the characters. There was also Essential Killing by Jerzy Skolimowski, The Revenant by Iñárritu. All that. There is a duo film that I find really touching and very beautiful, Dersou Ouzala by Akira Kurosawa. A meeting between a Russian cartographer and a Mongolian trapper at the beginning of the 20th century on the Siberian border. It’s completely crazy, and it’s really a film about a duo who have to trust each other in the urgency of the weather conditions, and the urgency of surviving too. At some point, we have to trust each other and recognize each other in the pain. It also helped me with this idea of having this pure love story side. Never give in to a form of eroticism, lust. All that, the idea of going towards that, was above all to tell a gesture of solidarity. A necessary gesture, largely. Interview carried out on December 14, 2022.
