Freedom is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. It seems everywhere in this grand world of ours, freedom and its basic concepts are being used to claim what is rightfully ours and fight oppression. To me personally, freedom finds its deepest meaning in Albert Camus' words: "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Because freedom is perhaps one of the thickest chains we, as women, modern women, can get caught up in.
I've lived my life for this word and it's coming up on a time when I know I'll regret it. So the film Party Girl , which opened the 'Un Certain Regard' section this year in Cannes, had a very special, personal meaning for me, an extra reason to watch it Its filmmakers, Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger and Samuel Theis, were the recipients of the 'Camera d'Or' best first feature prize and their chemistry, on and off the screen, is wonderful.
I spent half an hour in their company, surrounded by international journalists who made up our roundtable, and truly enjoyed hearing about Angelique -- Theis' real-life mom and the Party Girl herself -- and the dynamics of shooting a film based on real people but fabricated situations.
And dealing with real issues. It's surprising for the audience, in the film they begin a sentence in German and finish it in French. Is this typical of the region where you filmed?
Claire Burger: Yes, because we come from a town on the border between France and Germany and there people can talk German, French and sometimes at the same time, in the same sentence. Samuel, this is your family's story, so why make it fiction and not a documentary? Samuel Theis: We thought that it was the best way to bring out all the promises of fiction that she, Angelique contains -- her as a personality.
