Unveiled in competition in the 83rd Venice Film Festival, One Minute to Midnight is Nicolas Pariser’s fourth feature film after The Great Game (screened in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present line-up), Alice and the Mayor (selected for Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight) and The Green Perfume (likewise selected for the Directors’ Fortnight).

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Cineuropa: Where did you get the idea for this practically anti-narrative film, which strays significantly from current storytelling norms?
Nicolas Pariser: As more and more people from the film world have moved into series, the notion of the overriding importance of script architecture has taken hold. But, apart from when it comes to truly outstanding series, all I ever see are writing mechanics. So I wanted a film without any of that: a main character who doesn’t necessarily have a goal, where there aren’t any obstacles, where the other characters don’t have to prove useful later on, etc., trying to find the structure as I went along, more or less. I also wanted the characters to have strong emotions, unlike in my previous films, so I started with the idea of a love story set in 2025–2026. Relations between men and women have been shaken up a fair bit, and for the better. So I decided to embark on an exploration of a character who struggles to imagine love in the present, and even love in general when he thinks back to his past relationships; someone who basically investigates himself - the person he’s been, the lover he’s been between the ages of 20 and 50 - by questioning people from his past. A little in the spirit of Mr. Arkadin by Orson Welles or Angel Heart by Alan Parker: someone carrying out an investigation that’s actually an investigation of himself.

How did you approach the film’s peripatetic, dialogue-driven side?
I wanted to make a movie about Paris and for the city to be a real character, not just a backdrop. Since we had a fairly small budget, we didn’t close off any streets, for example, or hire extras. We filmed real passers-by and life in modern-day Paris. The main character has nothing to do for a week and, when you have nothing to do, you wander. And you talk about life as you walk with people. So it was bound to be an extremely dialogue-heavy film. And it turns into a mirror of the past which holds up a larger mirror to the relationship between men and women.

How did you want this mirror to function with this character who’s somewhat passive?
I like characters who don’t do anything. It’s a bit of a taboo in film, which is usually more action-oriented. This is a character who’s spent far too much time thinking about himself, to the point he hasn’t done much. He meets women who are either witnesses of his present and see him as he is today, or who belong to his past. And they hold up a mirror to him that isn’t necessarily flattering. His story had to be told through conversations, and they served as my raw material: rather than sketching out a portrait of him using actions or reactions he might have in response to events, I started with conversations either about his life or other subjects.

#MeToo has radically changed the way relations between men and women are perceived. How did you look to tackle this subject?
The film world has to try to explore this kind of indisputable discourse, the idea that thanks to the #MeToo revolution, the patriarchy will collapse and activism will have a concrete impact on domination and oppression. But it does have consequences for the bonds people have with one another. In my life as a 50-year-old man - and I think this is also true for many women my age - it has mainly taken the form of an awakening which has manifested in discussions, conversations and even arguments. In the film, I’m trying to measure the impact of these conversations. This revolution doesn’t have the same consequences for 20-year-olds as it does for 50-year-olds, who have to face up to their past, their blind, culpable choices, etc. I wanted to film that tension — what happens when there’s an awakening that isn’t immediately synonymous with emancipation. Because when you say: "from now on, that’s no longer possible" because it was the patriarchy, male domination, violence and sometimes criminal violence, the question is: "now that you know what happened, what do you do?"

The film has a clear political backdrop, with social unrest on the streets and a French capital filled with law enforcers, and even a little political fiction with the activation of Article 16, which grants exceptional powers to the President of the Republic in the event of a serious crisis.
To film France in the present day is to film acute political tensions. There’s a kind of deep, anxiety-inducing political chaos at play, with right-wing and far-right forces in positions of strength, and, if you’re paranoid, the potential for a police and/or military state. In Italian films from the Years of Lead — whether auteur films, comedies or ultra-violent crime thrillers — there was always a political layer which spoke indirectly or directly about the situation at the time. In France today, you get the feeling that everything might explode at any moment.