“Spectateurs!” interview with director Arnaud Desplechin

Arnaud Desplechin: “What I love about the word Spectator is that you don’t have to be a film buff, we’re all spectators, films belong to us”

“Spectateurs!” interview with director Arnaud Desplechin Chiara Nicoletti

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Spectateurs! by Arnaud Desplechin, special screening at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, is a love letter to cinema and its audience.

“This film is not an apology for directors I loved, or actresses and actors – explains Desplechin. It’s a depiction of what happens to common spectators. What does it do to us to watch films? How does it subconsciously affect us?”

Walking in the footsteps of a young Paul Dédalus, as the film were a coming of age story, Desplechin builds a mix of documentary, fiction and fantasy to analyze what cinema means to all of us.

There’s no such thing as a film more important or relevant than other, there are no guilty pleasures when it comes to films. Films are a popular art and we’re equal when looking at a white screen in the movie theatre.

Plot

What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic. So I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction, discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures.

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