19/11/2024 - The Academy Award-winning director talks about the wide range of his work and gives us an insight into the making of his animated film

(© Michael Kottmeier/Filmfest Hamburg)

As a director, Michel Hazanavicius has made very different films in terms of story, style and genre – ranging from black comedy (Mes Amis) to spy-film parody (OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), silent black-and-white melodrama (The Artist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile]), zombie comedy (Final Cut [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile]) and, now, a touching animated drama: The Most Precious Of Cargoes [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile]. Cineuropa talked with the filmmaker about his versatility and his latest project, out in French cinemas on 20 November via Studiocanal.

Cineuropa: Do you need the challenge of entering a new universe each time you make a film? 
Michel Hazanavicius: It’s very difficult to answer this question. I had this discussion with a friend of mine, another French director. Each time we want to make something simple, it becomes difficult or complicated. It’s true that making something that looks simple doesn’t really attract me. 

You watched about 150 silent films when working on The Artist. Why did it take about a decade to make it?
When you do a very specific movie like this, or with a very specific topic, you do some research and you nourish yourself with your subject. For example, for The Most Precious Of Cargoes, I didn’t watch any animated films, but I read a lot of books and testimonies about the camps, and I went to see them. My research focused more on the topic itself than on the style of the movie. But when you make a more formalistic movie like The Artist, for example, watching silent movies is part of the research for two reasons. It was part of the subject, but I also had to learn the vocabulary required to tell a story without words. So when I did the film Redoubtable [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile], I had to know my topic, which was Godard, but I also wanted to use Godardian patterns to tell my story. Each time, you gotta do your homework. 

What led you to the decision to adapt the story of The Most Precious Of Cargoes, based on the Jean-Claude Grumberg book, into an animated film?
It was offered to me like this. The producer sent me the proof of the book before it was published and told me we should make an animated movie. But even if he hadn’t said that, we would have chosen the animated format. I didn’t especially want to make a movie on that usually very dark topic, but when I read the book, the characters highlighted were the writers. They are the only characters that really bring hope and save humanity in these dark times. They saved other people by choosing humanity and dignity. That’s what moved me. 

How did you keep the balance between the imagination and the cruel reality of Auschwitz?
The story starts as a classical tale, and step by step, reality comes into the narration. At the end, it’s not a tale anymore but a story about a guy in a train station in 1964. But even a tale has an echo of the real world. I had to be solid with reality and also show the camps. I’ve heard a lot of stories about them as a kid, so I had a very strong imaginary of the camps but I wanted to go there myself. That changed something in the movie. When I saw Auschwitz, it really struck me that the trees, the clouds and all the nature were exactly the same eighty years ago – and they are still there. That’s why I decided to show a lot of nature. I changed the structure, so that reality comes later into the narration than in the book. 

Why did you decide to make a classic 2D animation film? 
It was difficult because it’s not the kind of movie we make any more. When you take human beings as characters that are not cartoonesque, you have to respect anatomy and perspective, which requires very precise drawings. We used 3D for very specific things. For example, we modelled the trains in 3D and then redrew everything. I wanted this 2D technique because it has a kind of naivety that fits with the tale and gives the right distance within the story. Moreover, 2D allows you to get into poetry, and to be more symbolic. 

How did you find studios, designers and animators able to produce the film in this style?
We had to find our way to work together because I am not an animation director. I had to understand how they work, and they had to understand how I work. It was a constant discussion between them and me, which forced me to make certain choices. But on the other hand, it gave me the freedom to do some things that I couldn’t do with actors in a live action movie.

What's your next project?
I don’t know what my next film will be. My next project is a book about Ukrainian defenders whom I met in Ukraine. I have written sketches and pictures to portray these Ukrainian defenders.