Premiering in Belgium at the Film Festival Oostende (30 January-7 February), Leni Huyghe’s debut Real Faces [+lee también:
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Cineuropa: Why did you feel the urge to tell this story today?
Leni Huyghe: It’s always a bit hard to pinpoint. I was actually working on a completely different script at first. It was about a couple who create a character together, then break up, and that character becomes a sort of battlefield between them. That was the project I was developing, but it didn’t work. I knew it was never going to pass. For a first feature, it raised too many questions, and I couldn’t answer them myself. So I really started writing from where I was. Around that time, maybe also because I was starting to work more seriously in cinema, there was a sense of disillusionment. When you’re on set, you see the ‘machine’ working, and sometimes there’s a lack of a human approach because everything has to move so fast. There was a kind of sadness that came with that. At the same time, I was going through a breakup. You’re repositioning yourself in life, and with this film I wanted to speak to anyone who is in that moment where things aren’t going well, where you lose yourself a bit and need to ground yourself again.

For your leads, you chose two very specific professions: a casting director and a microbiologist. Why?
I needed mirroring characters. Julia is someone who closes herself off, so she’s hard to read - you’re constantly asking yourself what’s going on with her. I once watched a masterclass where someone talked about mirroring characters, and that’s when Elliot started to grow. On a more personal level, I was also in a relationship with someone working on a ‘micro’ level, and there was this mutual fascination with something completely different. I find it important to look at things you don’t understand - engineering, space, science. Those fields really interest me. Sometimes you can get too zoned in on your own path, and a counterbalance becomes necessary. At the same time, Julia and Eliott are also similar: both work within hierarchies and have to deal with supervisors or leaders who don’t really support them.

The film feels very documentary-like at times, with lots of handheld shots. Was this something you envisioned early on, or did it come out of necessity?
We definitely had a clear idea. We watched a lot of Pickpocket by Jia Zhangke - that was a big reference. There’s a freedom in how the camera moves around people, a very vivid effect. I wanted a character who is sort of dying inside, while there’s a lot of life around her through human interactions. There are many rapid encounters, so using handheld camera made sense. Sometimes we set up scenes very clearly, but actors were also allowed to improvise. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to work in this way. Of course, low-budget necessity also plays a role: you work with the locations you have, without elaborate lighting setups.

Looking at the three main roles - Julia, Eliott and Julia’s boss - what qualities were you looking for? And, were the people being auditioned in the film professional actors?
The people we see in front of the camera during casting are a mix. For the main roles, I like to work with versatile performers. Leonie, for instance, might not be widely known in film, but for me she was well known through performance art. Besides, Leonie and Gorges both come from the same theatre school in Brussels, RITCS, which created a certain chemistry, even though they didn’t know each other beforehand. With Gorges, I first saw a video where he introduced a theatre festival and talked openly about lack of inclusion and dialogue. We discussed these topics when we first met. I like to have long conversations with actors - they bring their own perspectives. For the casting tapes, it was a mixture: Dutch-speaking and French-speaking castings, because the industries are still very separated. Speaking of Julia’s boss, Yoann Blanc is quite well known, especially in film and television. He’s Swiss-French but lives in Brussels and works a lot in theatre. He did a proper casting and matched the role very well. He brought softness and vulnerability, but also someone who can go too far without being fully aware of it. There’s an innocence to him, even when he crosses boundaries.

How do you work with actors, especially in a film like this with a moving camera and frequent dialogue?
We rehearsed the written text a bit, but a lot of dialogue emerged during the casting week itself. Actors knew it was a fiction film, but they could choose to play themselves, a version of themselves, or invent a character. Everyone understood what the film was about, including its exploration of intimacy and boundaries. Most people wanted to be very authentic and spoke as themselves. Sometimes we took what they said, rewrote it slightly, and then they performed it again after a few minutes. It was somewhere between improvisation and rewriting.

The film played at SXSW, Thessaloniki, Galicia and now here. Did you manage to speak with audiences, particularly with people who are at the stage of life depicted in the film?
Yes, especially in Galicia, where I had time to talk with people. There was a filmmaker from São Paulo who told me the film really spoke to his generation and their struggles within the industry. That meant a lot to me. But there are also viewers who don’t fully engage with the film - you can see that on Letterboxd. I feel it really resonates if you’re at a certain point in your life. Women working in this industry often recognise those dynamics very clearly.

Looking ahead, do you want to revisit these themes or turn the page?
My next film also deals with an emotional phase - prolonged mourning. I’m drawn to characters who hide a bit, who observe the world. That keeps coming back. There’s also a feminist perspective I want to continue exploring - seeing women interact in ways that are still underrepresented on screen.