1 – One curiosity: Being a French film / Canadian, why is shot in English?

Territories is in english because of the subject and the characters. They’re all Americans, it’s about the US border, and Guantanamo, so…. I think it’s a good reason enough for shooting the movie in english !

2 – Recently, we have seen French / Canadian very interesting horror movies and surprisingly liked very much to audiences and critics, we refer to “Frontiers”, “Martyrs”, “A l’interieur” … do you think that horror is more evolved than other genres in France / Canada? And how is this cinema worldwide?

Canal+ has produced 22 horror movies in 7 years, it’s what they called “French Frayeur”. So we can say that there’s a real will to produce a french cinema horror. Thanks Canal+. But these movies didn’t really worked in theatres, and the distributors hasn’t always done a really good job. So, it’s difficult to do horror movies in France. Maybe it’s better than in others countries, but there’s not a lot of money, and the distributor seem to buy them just to do Direct to DVD…
And about the horror movies worldwide, what can I say… I’m not very fond of it, especially when it’s maintsream : remakes deprived of all it political power, or stupid torture porns… There’s a lot of good things in Spain or in England, I think.

3 – What is the general opinion of the French public French? And what’s the opinion of the Canadian one?

It’s not released yet in Canada, and in France it was a small release in theatre, so I think that the audience will have the chance to appreciate it in January when it will be released in DVD and Blu-Ray.
But the critics were good : Premiere, the non-specialized press, and Mad Movies for example, loved it.
I hope that Territories is more than a film de genre. I think we can appreciate Territories even more if you’re not particularly fond of horror movies. There’s no blood and the horror is more psychological.

4 – To learn more about the first winner of Best Director at our Festival, we would like you told us when did you began to be interested in the cinema behind the camera, or did you on the other hand started in front of the camera?

No, never in front of the camera ! Or just for fun on my friend’s features !
I always watched a lot of movies when I was kid or teenager. The VHS generation ! I had a video camera when I was 15 and I started to do movies with my friends. Two different kind of movies : frightening stuff and really stupid comedies ! That’s still what I’m doing now…!

5 – We have seen that you have made 2 Short films and a TV series in France, apart from that, have you directed anything else?

Actually I made 4 short movies and this TV show for Canal+ ‘Madame Hollywood’ with Delphine Chaneac (‘Splice’) which is a kind of modern giallo where two models are tortured in a condo. Something about the dictatorship of beauty. Very violent and graphic and low budget.

6 – Why is your first film a thriller so influenced by horror and politics?

It’s hard to make a movie ; you spend years on it, so I think that it’s important to have something to say about the world we live in. Guantanamo is an horror movie in the real life. We’ve just taken the events that happened there (and still happen) and put them in a movie : it became an horror feature.
Most of all, I love the cinema of the seventies, because behind the genre, behind the thriller, the polar, the horror movie, even the comedy, in Italy for instance, it’s always political, it’s telling us something about how the world is.
So my references were Tobe Hoper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Peter Watkin’s Punishment Park, Haneke’s Funny Games.

7 – Back to the film: What’s the secret to make the actors feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations as they have to play?

You have to love your actors ! When you sincerely love them and they like you, when everybody knows the reason why he’s on the set, everything’s ok. For us, the only thing we had to fight with, was intense cold !

8 – Horror in your film is a consequence of political reflection or did you aim to make a horror movie only? If so, have you received any criticism about the political reflection?

Actually it’s not separated, I wanted to do an horror movie with a political background. This is what we were looking for with Thibault Lang-Willar, my co-writer.
People seem to understand what Territories is about and seems to like this political aspect.
But sometimes the horror movies fans think Territories is not good because it doesn’t give them their dose of blood, its survivor at the end, because I broke the structure of the movie with the detective, etc.

9 – For the American market, due to the high political content of the film, do you plan any distribution in that country?

There’s a US ditributor, but I don’t know yet when it will be relased or if they bought Territories just to put it in jail !

10 – The beginning of the film is truly shocking and disturbing. Did you want to make a statement of principles to make things clear to the viewer?

We had a lot of pleasure to write that scene with my co-writer. It was a real challenge to shoot it well (with Karim Hussain and the actors) and to edit it well (with Douglas Buck). I wanted to do something slow and very real. I thought a lot about Funny Games, all the begenning when the tension grows with little things, one word, one small movements, you never know when the things will get out of control…

11 – What make you feel the two prizes at the Festival de Cine de Terror de Molins de Rei? You have achieved something almost impossible to please critics and audiences!

What can I say ?! Of course I’m very glad ! Specially with a movie which I know is not easy. It prooves we always must try to shake the audience.

12 – Going back to the plot of the film: the character of the investigator / detective is a metaphor about the faith/will to survive of the group, as outlined in the cafeteria with his tattoo?? That is, for the viewer to imply that the group is going to die anyway?

My goal was to play with the codes, and if the idea is to give people what they’re expecting, what is the interest ?! So, at a point, I didn’t have anything more to say about the victims, we understood everything we have to know about them. So the detective appears and gives another point of view about all the questions the movie try to ask. The audience hope he’ll do something for them, even if I’m sure they feel that he won’t succed…
I don’t know, I think it’s interesting to play with this kind of expectations and to bring a character more ghostly, more sensitive after one hour of pure psychological horror.

13 – The dumb and asthmatic character is a clear attempt to humanize one of the two hijackers, or another way to show the group even more helpless, or has nothing to do with it?

He’s mute in front of the barbarty of our world ! He has literally lost is tongue !
And as a poor and fragile mute kid, he should be the survivor… so, again, it’s a code we played on.

14 – Looking ahead, your next project have something to do with the world of horror, or do you prefer to try other genres?

Actually, it’s a comedy about 2 losers who go to Kenya to kidnap Obama’s grandmother and ask a ransom for the White House !
I admire the Coen Brothers and their capacity to alternate very naturally film noir and comedies.

15 – Finally, do you believe that Festival de Cine de Terror de Molins de Rei contribute to spread horror genre or otherwise do you think that the public wants to see films such in more intimate environments, such as DVD for example??

I don’t know ! In one hand, if we look at the succes of the horror festivals around the world, we could say that the public loves watching these movies in theatres. But in the other hand, if the horror movie is not mainstream enough, it rarely works well… and the distibutors learn from that fact and don’t exploit correctly the movie… and of course the movie doesn’t work !
The solution ? Pretending to do a author film about classical ballet, and doing actually a horror movie with Natalie Portman !

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