11/08/2021 - Cineuropa caught up with the director at the Locarno Film Festival, where her debut film, a genre-bending gothic horror, had its world premiere

Charlotte Colbert is an established artist whose work has appeared in countless museums and galleries. Her work spans film, photography, ceramics and sculpture, and she often plays with and questions narrative structures, gender and identity. We talked to her about her debut film, She Will [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Charlotte Colbert
film profile], which has world-premiered out of competition at the Locarno Film Festival.

Cineuropa: As an artist, your work has appeared in a number of galleries – why did you want to make a film?
Charlotte Colbert: I've been wanting to make a film for a while now, and writing stories has always been one of the main things I've done. I have always been very passionate about film and writing scripts for other people. Then there were lots of things that I had been exploring in my work. I came across this script by Kitty Percy that was at the rough-draft stage, and we developed the screenplay together.

What was it about the script that struck you?
It had so many of the themes that I find really interesting: how trauma blurs the notion of time, the collective power of the unconscious, and the history of women. These are all questions that I have been asking. It feels like, in movies and in different disciplines, I have been trying to figure this out, asking what this is all about, and now I'm putting these questions out there.

This film looks into the persecution of women, and particularly how women who challenged the status quo were deemed to be witches. What made you explore that?
This sort of unjust persecution of women, the condemnation of women – and men, actually – or anyone who tried to get away from the norm, is interesting. Here, it's connected to the narrative of a singular pain and trauma that resonate with each other and make it right, somehow. I think there is this kind of reappropriation of the symbols and the imagery surrounding the things that have, in the past, stigmatised the personal lives of women, and we are in the process of reclaiming that. In She Will, there is a moment when the imagery of the witch first comes and is something to be afraid of, and as the narrative grows and the images recur, the protagonist comes to accept them as something that can be a tool of empowerment.

What made you choose the Scottish Highlands as the place for the retreat?
This place in Scotland is imbued with such spirit and that magical history.

What prompted you to think of these actors, Alice Krieg, Kota Eberhardt, Malcolm McDowell and Rupert Everett, for these roles?
It's so strange, in a way. The whole process of making a film is like a dream. Suddenly, you're dreaming of this story, and then it somehow morphs itself into something practical, like a script, and then it goes out into the world and starts having a life of its own. Then this dream you're having connects to other people, and you find out that the individuals who gravitate towards a project are quite particular people to that project, both in front of and behind the camera. The ensemble connects with the attempt to try to understand the boundaries of what is real, and the limits of how we understand ourselves and the world. Suddenly, we are all congregating and working in a sort of unconscious mode, dreaming together and trying to see what on earth is going to happen.