French Documentary Filmmaker Nicolas Philibert on the Need to Improvise: ‘I Plan for Something That Is Accidental’

variety.com:

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert is one of the world’s leading documentary directors, but he remains “humble,” he told an audience Saturday at Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, which had presented him with its honorary Golden Alexander award the previous evening.

Among other honors, Philibert won the European Film Award and was BAFTA nominated for “To Be and to Have,” and won Berlin’s Golden Bear for “On the Adamant.” In a discussion Saturday, Philibert said he doesn’t like to be described as an “observational filmmaker.” He is not merely recording reality, but “re-writing” it, he said.

Philibert, who edits his own films, added that the most important thing was to construct a narrative. He told Variety later that his films could be considered a form of fiction as they are his version of reality, and if five filmmakers shot in the same place at the same time, they would produce five different films. “It is my own gaze.

I decide where to place the camera and what to film. It is reality as being re-written by me. Not an observation,” he said during the talk, which was described as a masterclass although he wasn’t comfortable with the term.