Unveiled in the 58th Directors’ Fortnight (which takes place as part of the 79th Cannes Film Festival), Shana is the first solo feature film by Lila Pinell (a director with a background in documentary filmmaking), who made her name in ACID Cannes in 2017 with Kiss and Cry (co-directed with Chloé Mahieu).

Cineuropa: Where did the idea for a film centred on such a strong female character come from?
Lila Pinell: From a medium-length film, Le Roi David (winner of the Jean Vigo Prize in 2021), which I shot with the same actress, Eva Huault, and with more or less the same group of performers and the same crew. It was that first project that made me want to take the plunge into a feature film. Actually, I met Eva Huault in 2007 when I was shooting a documentary at a summer camp. She was one of the children at the camp and I was instantly taken with this little girl. Afterwards, I kept seeing her and filming her a bit, then we lost touch and I found her again when she was 20. A lot had happened in her life and I still loved her personality, her humour, her intelligence and all the silly things she got up to. So I wanted to create a character who wouldn’t be exactly her, but who would be heavily inspired by her and also by other young women I’d met, whilst incorporating some personal elements of my own. Based on this character I’d touched on in Le Roi David, there were two things I wanted to explore in more depth: her relationship with her mother and her relationship with her boyfriend.

The theme of toxic, controlling relationships lies at the heart of the film.
Eva has experienced situations very similar to the one depicted in the film. And from talking to other young women as well, I got the impression that there was something recurring in these controlling relationships. All around me, I was hearing more and more about this kind of complicated, controlling relationship, with a constant back-and-forth between “I’ll caress you” and “I’ll slap you”. There was a story to be told, but certainly not in a sensationalist way, not as some crazy thing, because even if it is crazy, it’s still something quite common.

What about the relationship between Shana and her mother?
I wanted to portray a character through everything she experiences, all her ambivalence, all her complicated relationships. That’s how the mother, the family and the boyfriend came to the forefront, but there are also the ‘safe spaces’ of friendship. Reality is at the heart of this film, so I didn’t set out to tackle any particular subject. It’s the character and reality that bring the themes to the surface.

Could the film be described as a tragicomedy?
This tone is common to all my films. I’m often drawn to things that can be tough, but not only do I not want to portray them in a straightforward manner, I also find that complicated and difficult subjects are much harder to watch when they’re treated in a straightforward way. So I’ve kept this tone, which is a mix of the grotesque, the funny and the horrible. Eva shares this view of the world, by the way. She can tell me about very tough things that have happened to her, but in a way that makes you laugh, and that’s also why I chose her: she’s a very colourful character.

The film isn’t a documentary, but its characters are very realistic and a world away from the ones we usually see in French cinema in this genre.
Shana is a character who moves between many very different social circles. She is equally at home in affluent neighbourhoods and more working-class areas, and she meets people from different cultural backgrounds. In Paris, all of this coexists, and the character is always on the move; she’s always full of surprises.