Light up the Void  

In this interview for The Ice Tower , Lucile Hadžihalilović reflects on her relationship to the imagination and the confinement it can create, as well as her unique connection with the viewer, who can freely wander through the film's mysteries, even when it depicts closed and oppressive worlds. These paradoxes, and others, are what we wanted to discuss with her during her visit to the BIFFF.

There are films and filmmakers who invite their viewers to actively participate in the worlds they create. Lucile Hadžihalilović's films certainly belong to this category. By cultivating an air of mystery, she welcomes the viewer to wander and reflect within them, even when depicting closed and oppressive worlds. It was these paradoxes, and others, that we wanted to discuss with her during her visit to the BIFFF, the genre film festival held in Brussels from April 8 to 20, 2025, where she presented her latest film, The Ice Tower . Although the timed format of an interview at a festival that organizes them in rapid succession is restrictive, the director's answers were detailed and generous, compensating for the lack of time to ask all the planned questions.

One could approach all your films through the lens of fairy tales or fables, but The Ice Tower is explicitly an adaptation of a fairy tale, namely Frozen . And one could also see in the relationship between the two main characters, young Jeanne (Clara Pacini) and the actress/queen Cristina (Marion Cotillard), something akin to a Faustian pact. How did you work with these influences and reminiscences?

"Compared to Andersen's "The Snow Queen ," I didn't follow the story at all, but I kept the figure of the Snow Queen and her encounter with the young girl. In fact, in the original tale, she's quite a child. But I wanted to make her a teenager because I felt it worked better that way, and so it's the first time I've had a character who isn't really a child anymore, but rather at the cusp between the two ages. Fairy tales are also stories that allow us to talk about maturation and growing up. This young girl feels a bit stifled in her small village and her home. It's obvious to her that she must leave and go to the city at the foot of the mountain. She runs away to get there, but from the very beginning, she's haunted by the tale of the Snow Queen, which is her favorite story. As the film progresses, we understand what this tale represents for her, and the figure of the queen will be embodied in an actress, since Jeanne finds herself by chance in a film studio where a film about The Snow Queen is being shot .

I'm not sure it's a Faustian pact between the two, in the sense that they're somewhat on equal footing. Obviously, one of them has the authority from the start, by virtue of her status as an actress, a star, and she reigns supreme on the set, even gaining the upper hand over the director. But I don't think Jeanne is truly a victim. She's fascinated; it's a bit like a mirror image where each recognizes herself in the other and vice versa. The actress is certainly a role model for the young girl, perhaps even a maternal figure, and conversely, the actress sees in the young girl the woman she once was. It's true that Cristina is a bit like a vampire, feeding off Jeanne's youth and energy, but Jeanne isn't passive in the relationship either. She acts like a voyeur, observing Cristina without her knowledge. There is a circulation of power between the two. It's an influence of one on the other, but it goes almost in both directions." LH

Indeed, Jeanne inserts herself into the film set and into Cristina's life. She is even compared to a rat that infiltrates the film's crevices, behind the set's walls, etc. Isn't the filmgoer also like that rat that must infiltrate the film's crevices, the fiction, to gradually penetrate this parallel world, this realm of imagination?

"Perhaps, yes, a bit like film buffs. In fact, Jeanne's story isn't so much about the birth of an actress as it is about the birth of a cinephile, through a fascination with images. She's truly captivated by the imaginary world that cinema can create. She comes from the outside, from reality, and ends up in front of the camera and on the screen. She goes through the looking glass, a bit like Alice in Wonderland. She finds herself in this imaginary world, which she herself, in a way, creates. She'll even find herself somewhat trapped by it, but will eventually break free. It's true that there's a parable of this fascination with images that speaks to the role of the viewer. Films, once they're made, belong to the viewers. Some films are more open than others, allowing them more or less space to infiltrate them. As a viewer, I like to be given a degree of freedom, to be given worlds I can inhabit. That's what I try to do with my films. Jeanne also wants to inhabit the imaginary world of the film and the story, and there's inevitably a little bit of me in her." LH

You do indeed work extensively on your films in such a way as to give the viewer a degree of freedom. You work on sensations and abstraction, but also on powerful images that offer clues to the viewer so they can forge their own path. In The Ice Tower , for example, there is the multifaceted crystal, a recurring motif that lends itself to allegorical interpretation, among other things.

"My main goal is to create a small universe that viewers can wander through. In The Ice Tower , the viewer is a bit like Jeanne, discovering a world that is foreign to her. They wander through it, gradually understanding and making it their own. Jeanne lingers and searches this film studio, day and night. Sometimes she picks up an object that sparks her imagination, her daydreams. When she glimpses the queen in a crack, it's like a hook that catches her and draws her into this world. Then she finds the costume and the crystal, which becomes her focus. It's like a key that allows her to enter this world, like a magical artifact that lets her create her own. And what I would like, in relation to the pacing of the film, is for viewers to have time to feel alive during the viewing, and not just be caught up in an immersive spiral of events that would prevent them from thinking." LH

Your films often explore the idea of ​​a parallel reality, a kind of purgatory or "pre-reality," which simultaneously underpins and influences this reality. Whether in Innocence or Evolution , the film's path leads from this world to reality. There's an exit into reality represented by the train in Innocence , or by the boat in Evolution . But in The Ice Tower , it's the opposite: a character comes from reality and gradually descends into fiction, into the imaginary, through the act of filmmaking. Did you conceive of the film's structure in this way, as an inverted response to your previous works?

"It's funny because I hadn't thought of it, but it does seem obvious. In Innocence and Evolution , we're immediately in another world, and the characters more or less leave it at the end, or at least head towards another cycle or another world, which we could indeed consider to be the real world. In The Ice Tower , it's closer to Jean-Pierre's Mouth , a medium-length film I made before Innocence , in which we were in a synthesized and stylized reality. We also start from something like that; it's reality, but not quite. The small village in the mountains where Jeanne lives, and her home, are already almost fairytale elements, but they're part of reality. And when she descends into the city, it's supposed to be reality, but it's also a stylized reality since it's practically reduced to a single place, namely the ice rink, which is already a gateway to the magical world, to the queen's territory. I wasn't fully aware that I'd done the opposite compared to Innocence and Evolution , but I wanted to start from reality this time and let it drift further and further away. After Earwig , which was immediately more self-contained, stranger at first glance, I wanted to start again from something more realistic." LH

Your films often depict closed universes. This is a recurring theme among many filmmakers who work with the imagination. The imaginary world is a kind of prison for the characters. Do you want to explore this confinement that the imagination creates for the characters, the viewers, and the filmmakers?

"I know that my films are claustrophobic, even Evolution , since it takes place on an island, so it's a kind of open-air confinement. And in The Ice Tower , it's the film studio itself that produces this. In the studio, there are doors and windows that are openings not onto external reality but onto the inner world of the people involved in the film. It's true that the imagination is both a door that opens onto possibilities, but it's also a mental world, reflecting the obsessions of its creator, so it is indeed another form of confinement. This would mean that there is no escape, that it's an illusion, and that there are only closed worlds. Moreover, without giving too much away, it's a possibility that Jeanne, at the end of The Ice Tower , is still trapped in the crystal." LH

You also use these worlds, and allegory, to talk about oppression, totalitarianism, and the manipulation of women and children. Eugenics is also addressed in Evolution , for example, as are experiments on guinea pigs. And there's also the figure of Pygmalion, which recurs in almost all your films. All of this seems to revolve around the idea of ​​domination. Does starting from the realm of imagination, fairy tales, fantasy, or science fiction allow you to "deconstruct" these subjects, or at least present them to the viewer in a more subtle, less direct way, so that they can develop their own thoughts and perspectives?

"I don't claim to be giving lessons at all, and I don't approach my films with the idea of ​​deconstructing anything. I think more in emotional terms, and I want to express feelings rather than ideas, but it's later that images or situations come intuitively, leading to those themes. Obviously, using fantasy, even elements of horror, allows me to express things more intensely and with greater freedom. It evokes stronger sensations, and I don't think I could express them as well if I were grounded in reality. Using allegory or symbolism helps me express myself, but I don't really see it as an intellectual or conceptual process. It's truly a mode of emotional expression." LH
 

Interview conducted by Thibaut Grégoire, on April 18, 2025 at BIFFF.

LE RAYON VERT : https://www.rayonvertcinema.org/la-tour-de-glace-lucile-hadzihalilovic/