Through The Eyes Of A Child: Remi Allier On His Short "Little Hands"
Rémi Allier is a young French director and screenwriter, who studied editing in Paris and directing in Belgium. While at University, he directed a few films (Jan and Zinneke), and found his passion for telling stories centered around children and the youth. Little Hands marks his first effort post-graduation. This gripping and enchanting film shares the story of a young child whose world changes in a flash, and it meditates on the violent tendencies of humanity and the powerful effect of a child’s innocence.
Upon discovering that the management is closing down the factory, a desperate employee kidnaps the toddler of the director in order to negotiate.
Little Hands took home the Best Short Film César Award (the French Oscars) this year and was in contention at multiple high profile international film festivals. We talk with Remi about his short, its origins, the disarming power of children, his upcoming feature film projects, and much much more!
How did your studies in Paris (for editing) and Belgium (for directing) impact (or alter) your approach to storytelling?
The idea of point of view guides my writing and my directing all the way to the editing room.
As an editor, I write in images more than words and those shots and scenes are already edited in my mind when I write them. This helps me a lot to feel the rhythm, the pace of my films. I think about films as if they would be one single shot, with only a string of emotion and tension.
Also, my editing background helps me to understand the way the space would be mapped or abstracted on set and the way the characters would be seen.
My editing experience has influenced my work a lot and so has my experience as an AD, location manager, kids coach, electrician, and camera operator. I approach directing as being a captain on a ship, it is better to have experienced the works of every single member of the crew so that when you ask for something special, you exactly know what it means for everyone on set.
But editing is clearly the main knowledge to me. It gives me a lot of confidence during the process at every stage of the script, during pre-production, production and post. On the set after every take, I tend to know if I have what I need and what I want for the edit. It also gives me knowledge that very few actors have, it helps me work with them and give them trust in what I do, where I want to push them.
Your work has a tendency to focus on youth and childhood. What is it in particular that draws you to stories centered around these themes?
I think youth and childhood are fascinating areas for telling stories. Babies have always fascinated me; the way they see and look at the world, interact without any judgment of expectations, they just “be” and learn.
Also with kids, you can explore the darkest parts of humanity, seeing it through the eyes of child. There is always hope and light, because they have that power to re-enlighten the world and re-enchant it. That’s why considering the way kids perceive the world is so interesting and beautiful to me.
I think it is very important to take children into account, the way they perceive the world and what we leave them as a legacy.
Also the idea is always to bring a different kind of light to a subject: in this case, the point of view of the baby brings curiosity on the topic, because it is something we have never seen on a screen.
Where did the seeds of Little Hands originate?
I wanted to question the violence of our adult world. Our adult world is ruled by laws that can easily lose sense.
The violence of society, of our system, the way it is built and the way fear for unemployment can create so much frustration and fear, that it can lead to greater violence and danger.
I wanted to question the subject of violence: where does it come from? Where is it sourced? I try to explore the violence of the adult world toward the eyes of the children.
I was a kid (8) when I started to say I wanted to make films and looking back now, I am looking for the way I was looking at things and life back then: the way I was questioning and not understanding some things that were ruled by adult’s laws. I started to write Little Hands after I got out of film school (IAD, in Belgium), I wanted to write a film with a baby in the center of the fiction, as the main character, using his point of view. I wanted to bring that “new image” on a screen and I wanted to explore our adult’s world and its violence through the babies eyes, far removed from the reality of a toddler. I wanted to describe a conflict, a tough situation that the baby wouldn’t be able to understand. On the other hand, I had a project about a worker fighting for his job. At some point I realized that if the abductor was doing it out of fear, in a desperate attempt to fight for his job, I would totally be able to understand him and feel the way he would get trapped at the same time as the baby is.
The film questions our violence. The violence of Bruno is just a reaction. Violence always has a source and I think it is always good to question the source, instead of answering with violence or judgment.
What were some of the challenges you faced crafting a movie that’s shown exclusively from a child’s eyes?
The main challenge was during the writing and throughout the whole process, to drag the audience into Leo’s point of view. Then we would slowly discover the fear and sadness moving the abductor.
Through my researches, I realized that empathy was the key aspect for films with a main character that we have trouble to identify to and understand. It is the same for babies and animals, we have trouble understanding and seeing the emotions and will, so we disconnect from the character. I noticed that in films with animals, the writers tend to take the main character away from his mother in the first minutes of the film. That’s what they did in Walt Disney’s Bambi or Jean Jacques Annaud’s The Bear, which instantly allows the audience to connect. The day after I graduated, I started to write the story of a 1 year old taken away from his mother, by a kidnapper. That was the key to get the audience interested in Leo and his emotions and feelings. Then we would slowly discover the fear and sadness moving the abductor.
I think the key points are: point of view and empathy. As soon as you use every aspect of the film and the tools to convey that and then you depict a strong situation with a lot at stake, there are a few chances that you miss your goal. I tried to be as generous as I can with the audience, to get a realistic, natural and poetic feel, as if you were inside the character.
Editing is a very important stage, where you find the rhythm. With Nicolas Bier, the Editor, we went for a very high pace, lots of tension a very few breaks.
Also something I didn’t realise before shooting and screening the film is that it is more than stressful to see babies in danger. We are not used to it.
Of course, the main aspect was the point of view of the kid, and we had to achieve that and make the audience believe the violence, without having our young actor going through any of that.
Given that the film is so reliant upon a toddler, what was the process of finding the right fit for the project?
For the baby in the end, there is Emile Moulron Lejeune aka Léo, you’ve seen his face and Camille Fleury Letienne, the body double.
I casted like a hundred babies during months, in Belgium and France, but could not find the one I related to.
Finally, Emile is the baby that I have watched growing up during the writing of the film. He is the son of my closest friends, Lise lejeune, the costume designer and Martin Moulron, the props master (My brother is Emile’s godfather, and I became the godfather of his newborn little brother). At the end of casting process, I asked them to come with Emile, just for fun because I needed some fun on a tough day. We did some filmed tests with Emile. He had such a strong personality and generosity for a 2 year old. It was as if he had understood what we were doing. We had some really magical moments with him. Moreover because he knows most of the crew and I, he knew he could be fearless, doing what I was asking all the time.
In the end, I think it might be the only way to make such a film, the way I wanted it. We had to be surrounded by trust and love. After I chose Emile, we looked for a body double in order to have more time to film (you can’t shoot more than 1 hour a day with a 2 year old), so I asked another couple of close friends, Julie & Arnaud, to come with us on board, with Camille.
Then we also had a rag doll (Samantha), for the most violent scenes.
You worked with Jan Hammenecker previously in your debut short, Jan. What was it about the role of Bruno that made you know he would be the perfect fit?
Jan Hammenecker aka Bruno, the worker abductor, is a famous actor in Belgium. I had the chance to work with him on an exercise during film school (Jan, 2012). It was unexpected for an actor like him to accept an exercise but he accepted to do it because he loved the script and the way I was pitching it to him. It was one of those encounters that really change you. I think about him a lot when I write, so offering the part of Bruno was more than natural. Also, he is a father and knows a lot about working with kids so he was a strong allie, being so generous and involved. He was more than curious about how to handle all these actions with such a young one. He loves challenges, and so do I, so it was a fantastic cooperation.
How did you find the rest of the cast?
The parents Steve Driesen and Sandrine Blancke, are also quite well known in Belgium. I met Steve during film school for an exercise that he accepted to do for me. I sent the script to Sandrine a few month before shooting and she immediately came on board!
The smaller parts/talking extras are film and theatre actors I had the pleasure to meeting in Bordeaux, near where we shot. I did some workshops with them as casting and created a group of 10 that would lead the extras and set the mood. There were very precise dialogues and actions.
All the extras are actual workers from the area, whom we met there. They were so involved and professional! Part of them has lived exactly what happens in the film, like strikes and riot in their factory near where we shot. It was a lot of fun to react fights with the riot police, as they were workers and disguise on both sides.
All the actors were so generous, they had to be 100% all the time, while the camera was only focused on the baby the whole time.
What do you hope audiences take away from film?
I hope they get a very strong new experience and makes them think. I also hope they would reflect a bit about our world’s violence. The violence of Bruno is nonsense but it is only a reaction of fear, in a situation of despair. I think the way our world is organised isn’t fair at all. When you are a little one, either it is that you are poor, or a kid; you don’t have power to change things.
One of the things I couldn’t help thinking about during the short is how events that occur in childhood have a ripple effect that often affects (or even haunts) us well into our later years. I couldn’t help but wonder if little Léo would turn out all right. What do you think? Will Léo be OK?
Thanks a lot for pointing that out. It was my main concern during the whole process. During a Q&A, I joked answering the kid died during shooting so there’s nothing to worry about… [laughs]
More seriously, Of course, the main aspect was the point of view of the kid, how to achieve that, how to make the audience believe the violence without having our young actors going through any of that.
First of all, I love kids in real life before loving them on the screen so this wasn’t an option for me. I wrote the film knowing I would have to shoot it so I had hundreds of tricks and solutions to tell the story of the baby without involving the kid actor into actual violence. Everything is made up but my job as a director (and as a film crew) was to make the audience believe that the baby was going through a traumatic and violent experience, encountering those energetic and intense scenes while in reality, he was just playing in the arms of his “friend”. The most violent thing he encountered was playing “helicopter” while running in the forest, which was only fun for him/them. It is all a matter of focal length, blocking, sound editing and point of view. Most of the time, when things appear the most violent, there is actually no baby involved, it is a dummy (the fall, part of the running, the window breaks).
There are also very strict rules in France for kids in film. Working with kid actors has been the core of my research for many years now (I did other films with kids, as a director (Zinneke [2013] or as kids coach on features and shorts). Working with a baby, for Little Hands, I had to re-invent all I knew in order to reorganize the film set and schedule around the welfare and safety of the baby.
Emile is very close to me. We had to build the relationship with other actors, especially with Jan Hammenecker so that they could get along and play. Once we had that bubble of trust and confidence around the babies (Emile, main actor, and Camille, the body double), we could explore safely, as soon as we knew everybody was at the right place and well hearted.
I also studied the work with young kids and babies, wrote my thesis about it, I talked with many specialists of childhood, childcare workers, psychiatrists, stuntmen, actors and directors, to really understand what I would be able to do and what I would not. My main inspiration for the communication with kids are Steven Spielberg and Jacques Doillon. I met Jacques Doillon for a very long interview for my thesis. And I watched everything I could about Spielberg at work with kids. If you are caring, loving, and take kids seriously, they are capable of understanding and doing things you couldn’t imagine.
Sometimes, we had also to juggle between takes, to change diapers or play in mud puddles. That brings a very cool and playful vibe on set ! I loved it.
I know you’re currently working on your first feature film. Is there anything you can share with us about the project and what to expect?
Sure, I am writing my debut feature, it’s about Nina, a 10 year old girl confronted with something like the end of the world as we know it and how she would follow her conspirationist father that decides for them to stay by the nuclear plant as an incident is occuring.
On the other hand I am also working on a feature version of Little Hands, which is very challenging and so interesting.
The film is having a tremendous life within the festival circuit, including Oscar consideration. What’s the most exciting part about all that for you?
At first, I just wanted to meet audiences, get feedback and understand people’s reactions, how some people accept or buy what is shown, how some people are scared for the baby, some people are absolutely gripped etc.
When the film started to get recognition, I went to Telluride to screen it. There I met Barry Jenkins (One of my heroes!). He curates the shorts there and is the ringmaster for the screenings.
He told me so many things about my film and my work. I realised this kind of feedback is so meaningful, because I hear the words, and they have the weight of the person’s work behind them, so it means a great deal to me.
With the film winning the César in France, I met so many people I have been admiring for years and years. I had a talk with Jacques Audiard on stage — that was dreamlike too!
So I realised that all the buzz is very exciting, getting recognition, excitement around my work is wonderful, and that we need it to keep moving forward and believing in ourselves. But the main thing to me is to understand the pros and cons of your work in order to improve and then connecting yourself with artists you admire or value is fantastic.
I come from a tiny village in Bourgogne region in France with no connections at all in the film business or any artistic field. Having new opportunities of connections now is fantastic, it fuels me with energy and motivation.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feeling in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!