Lolita Chammah – Barrage #Berlinale

PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Lolita Chammah, actress of the film Barrage.

Lolita Chammah is the protagonist of Barrage by Laura Schroeder, screening at the 67th Berlinale in the Forum Section. The film sees Catherine (Lolita Chammah) as a young mother coming home to her pre-adolescent daughter and her mom to try and pick up where she left. It is the story of a mother trying to learn how to get her role back into her daughter’s life. The film shows how young women have to deal with the society’s concept of a good mother and how difficult it is to decide which path to take in life. In Barrage, Isabelle Huppert plays Catherine’s mom and since the two women are also mother and daughter in real life, Lolita Chammah tells FRED the joys and difficulties of working with such a strong and famous Oscar nominee mother

Barrage: Catherine returns to Luxembourg from Switzerland following a period of ten years during which her daughter Alba was raised by her own mother Elisabeth. From the side of the tennis court, she watches Elisabeth coach Alba, her face clearly showing how well she remembers this mixture of stimulus and humiliation from her own childhood. The roles in this female family trio have been assigned. Does Catherine stand any sort of chance of being a mother to her daughter after so much time has passed? On a spontaneous trip to the family’s summer house, Alba and Catherine’s wounds and longings come out into the open. Sometimes they seem more like two very different sisters, who dance together in the garden and wear the same childish sweatshirts. When they bury Catherine’s dog Charbon in the forest, they resemble two children performing a ceremony for a pet. Catherine named the dog after a song, “Black Like Coal” – the same dark colour as the depressive moods she takes tablets to ward off. The gentleness of Laura Schroeder’s storytelling is shot through with serious undertones, supported by a carefully chosen soundtrack and most of all her superb actors.

For the film page on the festival website click here.