• Film
  • Brigitte Sy: Les mains libres (Free Hands)

Film

Brigitte Sy: Les mains libres (Free Hands)

The French actress is making her directorial Berlinale debut in the Forum with a dark and almost documentary-like feature film in which a director filming in a prison falls in love with one of the inmates.

Image for Brigitte Sy: Les mains libres (Free Hands)
Photo by Céline Canard

After working on a TV series and premiering short film L’endroit idéal at the 2008 Berlinale, the French actress is making her directorial Berlinale debut in the Forum with a dark and almost documentary-like feature film in which a director filming in a prison falls in love with one of the inmates.

Sum up your film in 1 sentence.

It’s a story of love, locked bodies and hands staying free.

2 good reasons why people should queue in the cold to see it.

You shouldn’t stand in line to see a film for “good reasons” but for “silly passions”.

Describe your film in 3 words starting with the same letter.

Amour. Abyss. Autobiography.

How did you come up with the initial idea?

The idea to make a film came after 10 years of prison work. My desire to make a film was inseparable from prison. I couldn’t imagine doing a film outside of prison.

If you could show your film in a double feature, which would be the other one?

Ne me libérez pas, je m’en charge [My Greatest Escape] by Fabienne Godet.

Why do you make films?

I’ve made this film because I couldn’t finish it in prison. I will make other films, because films are like children: with one you succeed in what you failed with the other, and vice versa.

If you didn’t make films, what would you do?

I would be a married woman, a housewife mending her husbands’ shirts who would make jams.

What would you like to be remembered for?

I don’t know if I want people to remember me when I’m gone. It’s more now that I don’t want people to forget about me.

Take two films on a desert island…

Accattone! by Pasolini and Pickpocket by Robert Bresson

A film or director that changed your life?

[The French director] Philippe Garrel, because he’s made me a mother and I’ve made him a father [The French actor Louis Garrel] at the same time that we wrote a screenplay.

Describe one of your favourite scenes in a film of your choice. Track out: In Accattone! when Accattone walks down the street, his head slightly tilted in full sun, poor as Job.