Hot Docs 2019 – Excess Will Save Us
In a small village of the North of France, an attack alert has been set off due to the combination of two events: the beginning of the hunting season and an argument between drunk Polish workers.
Interview with Writer/Director Morgane Dziurla-Petit
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
I’ve known Villereau, the village we see in the film, since I was a little girl. Part of my family lives there and I’ve always thought of the village as being full of madness and very cinematic sets. One day, my father called to tell me that there was an attack in the village. Since I was living in Sweden, I couldn’t simply turn on the tv to verify what he said. I immediately asked him to tell me more. He read me the article on the front page of the newspaper, which would become the synopsis of the film: “In Villereau, a village of five square kilometers in the north of France, a terrorist alert was set off as a result of the villagers’ hysteria. After investigating the matter, the police and army discovered that what they thought was a terrorist attack was actually the result of two overlapping events, the beginning of the hunting season and an argument between two drunken Polish workers. The villagers thought they recognized the words ‘Allah Akbar’ in the foreign language that they could not understand.” I laughed a lot at the story, but it also made me stop and think, which led me to want to make Excess Will Save Us. Actually, the attack alert that occurred in Villereau is only one of many examples of the type of madness and excess everywhere in the village that I find very inspiring. I think there are many of us who’ve known people in our childhood who tended to overreact. Returning to the village as a filmmaker had a very refreshing side because the inhabitants surprised me every day.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
It is a very funny film that plays with the borders between documentary and fiction. It has a dark sense of humor and beautiful photography. You can see many layers in it. I have watched it hundreds of times and I could still watch it every day because it keeps me entertained every time.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
I believe that everybody has weird memories with their families that will make them relate to the film. Also, I am a city girl but I related immediately to the story of these villagers because I had the same paranoia about terrorism. With this story, I could finally laugh about it.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
There is something that came really late into the film: the young girl walking backwards. At first, it was a joke from the editor, who had trouble making a cut, but I wanted to take this joke seriously and see if it worked. It’s been a revelation for me, the key of the movie: it shows onscreen the strangeness we feel entering the village. It also creates an enigma, that I answer indirectly at the end of the film. Concerning the movie structure, this is approximately the same as I imagined at first. I’ve always wanted this ending with my grand-father pointing his cane as a gun because he told me that he does that often, and I found it so representative of the village’s paranoia. But another surprise appeared: even if I asked him to do it in silence, he started mumbling words without stopping. While listening, it seemed obvious to me that these words should be in the end credits. The shooting lasted eight days and we got out of it with seventeen hours of rushes. The most complicated thing was to choose what would be the final version of the film: there were so many rushes, beautiful scenes that I had to say goodbye to, simply because they didn’t go with the movie structure or duration. With everything that we had, we could get lost and never stop editing.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
Very good feedback, the film always gets strong reactions. And the inhabitants of the village became fans of the film. My dad especially, who is kind of the main narrator, is so happy about it. He loves to see people recognising him after screenings and asking him for selfies.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
A lot of people in France linked the film with the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) movement. As we shot the film before the movement started, it is something that did not really come to my mind when making the film. I would say the Gilets Jaunes movement is more of a reaction to what we can see about the deserted and forgotten countryside that is in the film.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We are looking for journalists, film festival directors, sales agents and buyers to amplify the audience of this film.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
I want Excess Will Save Us to be a comedy that makes one sad. I wish this film makes the audience want to open to the strangeness and the melancholia they have in themselves. That they question themselves about their paranoia and judgments.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
Morgane Dziurla-Petit is writing a feature film called Gudars Skymning.
Interview: April 2019
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Excess Will Save Us
In a small village of the North of France, an attack alert has been set off due to the combination of two events: the beginning of the hunting season and an argument between drunk Polish workers.
Length: 14:26
Director: Morgane Dziurla-Petit
Producer: Fredrik Lange
Writer: Morgane Dziurla-Petit
About the writer, director and producer:
From France, MORGANE DZIURLA-PETIT studied cinema at Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris and film production in Cannes. She moved to Sweden in 2017, where she keeps on creating new narratives, moving borders between documentary and fiction. Excess Will Save Us is her second short film, an award-winning documentary picturing the strange atmosphere of a village in the North of France. She is developing her first feature, Gudars Skymning, that will be shot in Sweden next year.
FREDRIK LANGE is a producer at Vilda Bomben Film AB, working on films such as Reconstructing Utøya by Carl Javér (official selection at the Berlinale) and Heartbound by Janus Metz (premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival). He also works occasionally for the EU MEDIA Programme as a project evaluator since 2010.
Instagram: @morganedziurlapetit
Hashtags used: #excesswillsaveus #morganedziurlapetit
Website: www.vildabomben.com
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Fajr International Film Festival / Tehran, Iran - 18-26 April; Brussels Short Film Festival / Brussels, Belgium - 25 April - 5 May; Hot Docs / Toronto, Canada - 25 April - 5 May; Courtivore / Rouen, France - 3-24 May; The Norwegian Short Film Festival / Grimstad, Norway - 12-16 June