Lucile hadzihalilovic/Gaspar Noé/octobre 2025
GASPAR NOÉ: "What was the first film that really impressed you, and why?"
LUCILE HADŽIHALILOVIĆ: "Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. I must have been four or five years old, and it was probably the first time I went to the cinema. I remember the frantic chase of the young apprentice sorcerer trying to escape the enchanter, who transformed as he passed through clouds, a forest, a river, even fire… I was astonished, terrified, and fascinated. I’ve never watched the movie again. Maybe I completely reinvented that scene in my memory.
NOÉ: What was the second film that impressed you, and why?"
"La Piscine by Jacques Deray, with Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Romy Schneider, and Jane Birkin. I was eight or nine years old. I didn’t understand the film at all, but I remember the half-naked adults on the screen and the erotic feeling it gave me." LH
"When you were entering adolescence, what other film really impressed you, and why?" GN
"The Exorcist by William Friedkin, which came out when I was thirteen. It’s the film that terrified and haunted me the most in my life. I identified with the young girl, and it touched on an adolescent’s fears of possession and bodily transformation—of sexuality, obviously. It wasn’t until I was forty that I was able to watch it again and discovered a completely different story from the one I thought I had seen back then." LH
"What film from the 1980s or 1990s really impressed you, and why?" GN
"I’ll mention two that, although released at the very end of the 1970s, I associate with the following decade: Eraserhead by David Lynch (1977): I had never seen a film like it, where dream and reality were so closely intertwined. An abstract and concrete film at once, mysterious and obvious. And that extraordinary soundtrack—both inspired and inspiring. The fact that it was a first film, made with very little money, made me understand that creating a complete universe with very little was possible. Very inspiring! Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky (1979): a metaphysical science-fiction film, also about the mystery of the world. A mystery as simple and profound as nature itself, where a shot like the wind in the grass seems miraculous… And the idea of this Zone where everything is possible—the marvelous and the horrific alike. These two films share their visual and sensory power, the way they create a universe rather than just tell a story, and how they reveal another dimension of reality itself." LH
"What film since the early 2000s has really impressed you, and why?" GN
"If I hadn’t participated in it, I would have said your film Enter the Void. What a shock it would have been to discover such a playful and daring film without having followed its writing and production process! For the past two decades, I would say the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (from Blissfully Yours to Memoria), a discovery as important to me as Lynch or Tarkovsky. For his universe that intertwines the supernatural with the natural, the mythological with the profane. And for the original narrative structures of his films and the magnificent sound work. Finally, more recently, the film that impressed me the most is The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer—for the intelligence of its concept and its brilliant direction, but also for the acuity with which it speaks of the banality of evil, both yesterday and—unfortunately—today.
NOÉ: What makes a film better than a novel, and vice versa?" LH
"It’s neither better nor worse—it’s simply different. A film evokes what cannot be said with words, things of the unconscious. Cinema is connected to dreams. It’s a sensory experience that can be collective, like a celebration or a ritual. A book is a more intimate, more cerebral experience." LH
"Are there any fairy tales that deeply marked you in your life?" GN
"Hans Christian Andersen’s tales, which were read to me when I was very young and which I’ve never stopped reading and rereading: The Little Mermaid, The Traveling Companion, The Red Shoes… discovering something new each time. Very poetic and vivid, beautiful and cruel, humanly complex, and not at all moralistic." LH
"Children appear in all your films, but have you shown your films to children? Doesn’t it frustrate you to deprive them of that?" GN
"Innocence is a film I’ve shown to many children, especially girls aged eight to ten. In my opinion, it’s really a film for them. I told this to the distributor at the time, who then organized a screening for children with a questionnaire they had to answer. In general, they understood the film much better than adults! I remember a little girl explaining the film to her father and telling him how normal what was shown seemed to her." LH
"What is the most difficult part for you in creating a film?" GN
"The shooting—though there are moments of intense joy—because I feel like I’m steering a ship in the middle of a storm, sometimes in great solitude." LH
"What is the most natural and joyful part for you in creating a film?" GN
"Editing. Playing with images and sounds in the calm of the editing room after the maelstrom of shooting—what a pleasure! But I also really love scouting and casting, because you discover much more than you had imagined when writing the script. It opens up exciting perspectives and brings fresh energy after the sometimes tedious writing process." LH
" If you were offered the chance to make a biopic of an artist from the past, who would fascinate you enough to devote two years of your life to it?" GN
"Perhaps Toyen, the Czech painter and illustrator, a major surrealist artist. For the uniqueness and poetic strength of her work, her determination to explore new emotional spaces throughout her life, her interest in eroticism and desire as creative forces, and her rebellion—both in her art and in her life—against the trials she faced: war, Nazism, exile." LH
"I know that, among contemporary writers, Kazuo Ishiguro fascinates you the most. Why? GN
"I’m always deeply moved by the immense emotional power of his stories and the poignant, delicate, and complex portraits of his characters. And I’m also amazed by his ability to inhabit narrative genres—science fiction, the fantastic, detective fiction, fantasy—with a completely personal vision." LH
"What would you recommend to teenagers who want to become filmmakers?" GN
"Try to build a body of work, not a career, and pour into it all the passion and determination you’re capable of." LH
"What is your favorite sequence from your latest film? What does it remind you of?" GN
"The young heroine devouring the bird for the sake of the shoot, as a pledge of submission to the Queen. It’s a turning point in the film where the young girl crosses a boundary, breaks a taboo. Clara Pacini played this scene in a stunning way." LH