For this sensitive and moving documentary, Laure Portier filmed her brother, Arnaud, for nearly fifteen years. A cinematographic work immediately hailed by critics. Meet.
“Soy Libre” is a family film… like no other. No memories of holidays at La Bourboule or birthday cakes. The foreground of the documentary is a nocturnal tracking shot, a tight shot of Arnaud’s neck as he lugs his big sister around on his scooter. Because this film, we understand it straight away, they are going to do it together.
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The first images shot date back to 2005 in a ZUP in Niort. Extract :
She: “What do you think of the city?”
Him: “It’s gloom. Since Sarko passed, it’s become even more complicated…”
She: “Stop Arnaud! You’re not talking to the camera, you’re talking to me. What the fuck do you have with Sarkozy? Do you think you’re going to be on television with my film? “
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The tone is set and the complicity between the two protagonists of the film clearly established. At the beginning, it is her who films and asks the questions, but she seems to accept and understand the rules of the game without any problem. Another excerpt:
Him: “My mother, apart from the housing estate and her psychiatry, I don’t see what else she knows, it looks like she likes that life”
Her: “Your mother is mine”
As the years go by, Arnaud gains confidence and tries to curb his violence. Finally, Laure, his sister, will entrust him with a camera, just to materialize a little more this collaboration in creation. The way too, the unique surely, to show the loneliness of Arnaud when he decides to leave France to Spain first, then to Peru.
Presented at the Cannes Film Festival last year, “Soy Libre” received only good reviews from the specialized press. And for good reason. Screening until March 22 at La Coursive in La Rochelle, we met Laure Portier as part of an exhibition of her brother’s drawings in the gallery “The Place of Gaze”.
“I entered film school in 2005 and I immediately wanted to make films with him, to share what I received as instruction. Then, in 2012, when he left Baumettes prison in Marseille, I came back to him to tell him that we were really going to make a film together. The idea is to share something but also to tell its story. This is the story of his trajectory from his exit from Les Baumettes, to where he has arrived today in South America, the story of his movement towards a better elsewhere. But I’m not just the big sister who did something about her brother, we did something together. He gives a lot to the film and somehow he fed me too“.
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“Injustice because he is a child who grew up in a closed environment. He was out of school at 12, he was in a home, in a foster family, in a closed educational center and we are talking about a child. I had the feeling of a great misunderstanding, a lack of investment from adults in him, the school which was not on the right scale to welcome him and take the time he needed to find his place. He is a child who has been rejected and violently bullied. The more we looked at him, which was a look at a child who did bullshit, the more, to satisfy the gaze of adults, he did bullshit. This story was going around in circles“.
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“He had to get moving to overcome certain things. By leaving and learning a new language, he reinvented himself and drew what he wanted to go. There was surely the desire to save him from a trajectory, in any case to prevent him from returning to prison and there was also the desire to avenge him by telling his story. I felt a terrible injustice in what he had experienced and I also wanted to share with him something that was more beautiful, greater. Making films was for me something more generous, a nicer life to have than hanging out in a city. I didn’t think people would like Arnaud so much when they saw the film. He was very critical of the framing, the editing, but also proud that we managed to bring this project to fruition. He watches us from afar“.
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After La Coursive de La Rochelle, “Soy Libre” continues its tour of France for a highly symbolic stopover in Moulin du Roc in Niort. Laure Portier will meet the public following the screening on March 25.
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