“Me, You”, interview with actress Sonia Ammar

Presented in the Grand Public section of the 21st Rome International Film Festival and coming to Italian cinemas with Eagle Pictures, Me, You by Bille August is set in 1950 on a small Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. It tells the story of Marco, a fourteen-year-old Londoner on holiday with his family, and of his encounter with Caia, a young Jewish woman orphaned during the Second World War. Over the course of the summer, their bond turns into a journey of discovery and growth, touching on the trauma of war, memory and the passage from childhood to adolescence. Sonia Ammar, who plays Caia, talks about a shoot where the whole island became the set, the emotional backstory she built for a character of few words, the flashbacks she has yet to see, and the lesson of empathy the film carries into the present.

The whole island was a set

Asked how this more intimate production compared with her previous experiences, Ammar describes it as one of the most special of her career, largely because of where it was filmed: “It didn’t feel like a normal set. The whole island was a set. We were waking up and walking to work, and that never happens. There were no cars. We were really living on the set, on the island, and so the relationships that you build with the people around you become much stronger, and it makes the experience much more real.” The scale of a production, she adds, is not what matters to her: “I don’t really think about the size of sets. When I’m in a character, in a role, I’m very present in the moment and the noise all around doesn’t really affect me so much. It’s all about your scene partner, the actor, the director, and that relationship you have with them.”

Filling the gaps

Caia, Ammar explains, is a character who says little, which meant doing much of the work beyond the page: “Caia is not a young woman of many words. While she was written very beautifully, there were some gaps that I had to fill. So, for me, creating a visual backstory was the most important thing for Caia, and an emotional backstory.” Her preparation was built on recreating memories for the character: “To visualize and try as hard as possible to understand the tragedy and the weight of this past that she holds, that as much as she would like to move past it, is such a big part of her identity.”

Seeing young Caia

As Caia shares her past with Marco, the audience sees it unfold on screen through flashbacks of her as a child. Ammar has not watched those scenes yet: “That was shot after. They shot it months after. So I have not seen it, but I saw a still, a photo of young Caia, and I have to say that it was moving. So I really look forward to seeing that, because to imagine it and to see it are two different things.” She fully supports the director’s decision: “I thought that was the right choice of Bille, to film those flashback scenes.”

The need to be seen

Among the film’s key moments are the scene in which Marco and Caia open up and share secrets they have never told anyone, and the one in which Marco learns how her name is truly pronounced, a moment of recognition for her and for her pain. For Ammar, being acknowledged is the first step: “Human beings, we need to feel seen and understood. To me that is the deepest, the most primitive thing. What it means to be human is to be understood, to connect. And here, through the exchange of each other’s secrets, both Caia and Marco will release something that they didn’t realize they had, and that to me was the core of the film.” Those exchanges, she says, came with a weight of their own: “These beautiful moments between the two, where they feel the safe space to be able to say something that Caia has never told anyone. I feel that was a big responsibility.”

Invisible scars

Asked how the film speaks to the present, and to the way war continues to affect people, Ammar sees it as a lesson in empathy: “You never know the invisible scars that people hold. You never know what people have been through, no matter how okay they may seem on the outside. Everyone has their story. Everyone has their trauma somehow. Everyone has lived something that they don’t talk about.” What matters, she says, is finding people who can hold that space: “It’s the importance of finding the people that you trust, who can hold space for you, who can listen without judging, whether it be in friendship, in family, in love. It’s all the same thing.” And she concludes: “Of course the historical context is important, but the story of humanity, of connection and of vulnerability is universal. It doesn’t have a time.”

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