After winning over audiences at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (and elsewhere) with his movie Vertige [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film], which revolved around a railway-based manhunt, Abel Ferry is returning to Neuchâtel with his latest feature, Squealers [+leggi anche:
recensione
intervista: Abel Ferry
scheda film], a hard-hitting, cruel yet hilarious title about animal abuse. On the occasion of the film’s presentation in a world premiere at the NIFFF, the director spoke about how genre cinema intrigues him, as well as discussing his actors and the film’s genesis.

Cineuropa: How did the idea for the film come about? Were you looking to focus on animal abuse from the outset?
Abel Ferry: From the moment Fabrice Lambot, the film’s producer, sent me Guillaume Chevalier’s screenplay 4 years ago, we started working on the story and thinking about the legitimacy of violence in order to denounce it. From the very beginning, the idea was to focus on a group of young ecoterrorists who enter an abattoir to try to film the mistreatment of animals. We wanted to explore the subject of animal abuse using young, marginalised people who were trying to change the world. That said, the characters are fairly ambiguous, and violence isn’t solely the preserve of the so-called "baddies". Philippe [played by Olivier Gourmet], the director of the abattoir, genuinely wants to protect his employees from losing their jobs on account of the videos filmed secretly by the ecoterrorists. He’s not just motivated by money or more mercantile reasons, he does really care about them. All of them have their own reasons and they defend their own causes. Obviously, there are characters like Michel or Fouad, for example, who lend the film a more extreme edge. We also see two diametrically opposed ways of life in the film, one more marginal, humanist and autonomous where a critical spirit reigns supreme, and another more rational and concrete approach, angling for the higher echelons of power. Despite these differences, violence overwhelms everyone, regardless of whether the cause is justified.

Violence is head-on and direct in your film, and it’s mainly male characters who wield it. Could we read it as a critique of toxic masculinity?
If that’s something people pick up on in the film, it’s not something we’d planned for from the beginning. The female characters also use violence, but more belatedly and only if they’re forced. Men, however, in my film, give in to a kind of exaggerated virility which naturally drives them towards extreme and violent behaviour. That said, I totally agree with you that violence is also socially constructed, and woman are often excluded from it. They’re seen as more considered and better balanced.

What is it that you like about genre cinema? What are the advantages of critiquing the world through the prism of horror?
When it came to my film, we started with a specific issue - exposing animal abuse, and violence, more generally - and we tried to find a specific original angle from which to broach it. I’ve always liked entertaining films but for them to be really good you have to make sure viewers aren’t bored, that they have a good time, and that they don’t think about their day to day lives during the film. I’ve got a lot of respect for the public and, in my mind, genre films should allow them to travel, to help them have a good time. I’m talking about films like Terminator or Alien, but also all of Spielberg’s films too, which made me want to make films. I’ve got an appetite for these kinds of films, and I’ve tried to follow along these lines ever since I started making short films. I find that the particular mise en scène approach in these films allows me to "play" with the audience, in the nobler sense of the term.

How do you work with your actors and actresses?
The film is written and fine-turned in advance. The actors and actresses have already seen it, I’m not too manipulative with them and I try to be clear over what I want. For example, from the outset I told the protagonist, Kim Higelin, that she was going to have to swim across a lake, that she wouldn’t be alone, but that the scene was going to be shot in one take, without special effects. The same thing was true for the fight scenes. The actors and actresses knew that that fights were actually going to happen and that stunt doubles wouldn’t be getting involved each and every time. They knew their choreography and they were ready in advance, everything was in place.