Céline Sciamma On ‘Petite Maman,’ Sculpting Time, & Democratic Cinema [Interview]

theplaylist.net:

Céline Sciamma makes small films that contain multitudes, tender and vivid portraits of sisterhood and self-becoming. Imagining spaces out of places where women can discover themselves and each other freely, the French filmmaker first earned acclaim for a trio of social-realist coming-of-age dramas: 2007’s “Water Lilies,” 2011’s “Tomboy,” and 2014’s “Girlhood.” Though connected in their study of adolescence, gender, and sexuality, as well as their close and empathetic attention to outsiders navigating rites of passage, these films — especially “Girlhood” — also revealed Sciamma’s burgeoning interest in modes of female-gaze storytelling beyond the naturalistic.

READ MORE: ‘Petite Maman’:Céline Sciamma Delivers An Intimate Tale Of Grief And Parenthood [Berlin Review] And so it felt like a creative breakthrough as much as a commercial one when 2019’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” which won the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay at Cannes, catapulted the screenwriter-director to international recognition.