Discovered in competition in Locarno back in 2009 thanks to A Real Life, Sarah Leonor is returning to the Swiss festival’s most eye-catching showcase on the occasion of the gathering’s 79th edition, with D’ici là, her fourth feature after The Great Man (screened in Toronto’s Discovery line-up in 2014) and the documentary Ceux de la nuit (selected at Cinéma du Réel 2022).

Cineuropa: How did this three-part film take shape?
Sarah Leonor: The first chapter was devised as a short film entitled And Then He Became a Mountain, which was screened at the Brive Film Festival in 2017. But lots of people wanted to know what happened to Lucien in his cabin. I also found that this new way of working on fiction worked well, with a very small team and my usual collaborators (Laurent Desmet on photography, Philippe Grével on sound, David Faivre on set design). So rather than throwing myself into writing a new feature film, I thought, why not make a triptych based on the landscape, telling three stories in the same region, in the same natural setting, but shown in three different lights. The two subsequent chapters wrote themselves. I also liked the idea of one story with a changing viewpoint, depending on the character, which would allow me to broach things from a wider angle.

How would you describe the three stories?
An attempt to escape the world, a fear of dying and a rebirth. These also feed into the three seasons depicted in the story and what happens with the characters’ themselves. I tried to adopt a minimalist approach, but I applied it to universal subjects: the way our certainties are pretty much destroyed in our forties (even if we don’t all run away from the world, like Lucien does), the fear of dying, the enthusiasm of youth and discovering our own bodies, our limits and our identity. But it’s not naturalistic because the stories take the form of fairy tales, with a slightly tenuous relationship with reality.

Without getting philosophical, could we say that you’ve tried to explore the essence of humankind vis-a-vis nature?
The film goes back to basics on all levels: in its decision to enter into the characters’ inner worlds and describe sensations and impressions; in the minimalism of what it explores, whilst still moving the audience; in the way it’s shot, too. What unites mankind and nature is too vast a subject to tackle head-on, but I wanted this question to permeate the entire film, given the setting that I’d chosen.

What about the haikus which break up the story?
The idea came to me during the editing phase, based on how I’d shot the first chapter in particular, taking a sparing approach full of still and panoramic shots. It’s a way for the viewer to feel what it was that guided the entire process of making the film. Rather than explaining or talking about things, I wanted to try to plunge the viewer into a sensory bath and make them feel human emotions by immersing them in nature, as often happens in the art of haiku writing. It was a connection which drove me to move even further towards this essential side, towards a film which speaks to the senses.

How did you strike a balance between a fiction film and an approach sometimes bordering on documentarian?
The film’s documentary side mostly comes from the character of the farmer who’s actually a farmer in real life, but it’s also true that I like using films to describe reality, our relationship with work, and to portray certain characters and situate them within a particular region, within that atmosphere, like Lucien who builds his cabin or Aline who sets camera traps.

This was a complicated film to finance. Where would you like to take your singular, high-artistic-quality approach?
I would like to alternate films like this one, which was very lightweight, almost home-made, where we had to be very versatile, but which doesn’t keep you afloat financially, with - now that I have a certain level of experience in the field - slightly more flexible films, over which I’d no doubt have to make a few concessions but which would be easier to fund. I actually already have a far more ambitious project which is good to go and for which I’m seeking a production company who have enough experience in the industry to make this film a reality.