“Paris Paris”, an interview with director Isabelle Tollenaere

Belgian filmmaker Isabelle Tollenaere, already known and acclaimed at major festivals for her highly poetic hybrid documentaries exploring “the interplay between the rapid transformation of our physical world and the human experience of time and memory”, such as Battles (2015) and Victoria (2020), has just presented her first scripted feature film, a docufiction suggestively titled Paris Paris, in the Proxima Competition of the 60th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (July 3-11, 2026).

This work – another beautiful and deeply moving expression of her fascination with places and their constant transformation in resonance with the individuals inhabiting them, and with what traces they leave when one or the other disappears – is indeed reminding, well beyond its title, of the mix of melancholy and tenderness found in another film where the “Paris” opening the title was not in France, and also bears echoes of another one which could have been called “Paterson, Paterson” – and generally speaking of the body of work of both the cult filmmakers to whom we owe these masterpieces –, while the framing of its scenes and the bareness of its setup crowded with existentialism often evokes a slightly less defeated Samuel Beckett, as humour and human connection really shine through in Paris Paris (with no comma between the two city names).

As Tollenaere herself points out, in her first reality-based fiction work, the underlying themes of alienation, bottomless nostalgia for places which do not exist anymore, and suppressed longing, as only the present seems to count, are balanced by the friendship and warmth of the variegated community of displaced people we meet as they try to find their place in Paris, France – at the language class where the film starts, but especially between the naked walls (except for one adorned with wallpaper featuring the Eiffel Tower) of the abandoned flat where three most endearing characters Yi-En from China, Junior from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hamzah from Palestine end up “finding a home with each other”.

A replica of Paris in China as the spark for the film

On what sparked the making of this movie: “When I found out there was a replica of Paris that was built in China, I was immediately fascinated by this and I also quite immediately had the idea to make a film based on the doubling of the same city, without knowing what it could entail yet.”

“So I went to Tianducheng, which is where the replica of Paris was built, and I was really struck by this construction fever that I saw everywhere. Entire neighbourhoods were being demolished and there was construction happening everywhere, so there was a drastically rapid changing of the landscape occurring, and I also heard testimonies of people saying ‘when I leave home for a while and come back, I don’t recognise the place anymore. I can’t find my way home anymore,’ so this is when the themes of loss, disappearance, memory, and the precariousness of home first started erupting.”

“And then I thought that maybe I could combine this with filming a Chinese community or a Chinese person in Paris, France but then I felt like I did not want to focus too much on the concept of China, but more on the feeling of foreignness and alienation and on this idea of having to leave home behind and trying to find a new home in this new place, so I came up with a story of the three men coming from very different parts of the world, each carrying memories of other cities with them.”

A script written over ten years, shaped by real lives

On the incredibly precise and rich script, so elegantly carried by the thoughtful mise-en-scène and cinematography that it lets meaning emerge and texture build in the space between the lines: “As I was telling the Czech audience the other day, I actually wrote the first draft in the Czech Republic, where I came on a holiday, back in 2015, so I worked on it for a very long time.”

“[It represents] many years of finding things in reality and bringing them into the script, and then again throughout the process of the casting and the repetitions that we did, during which they [the non-professional actors, here playing slightly different versions of themselves] brought their personal stories and personal objects, and [in the case of Mahmoud], who actually writes poetry, the poem I included in the film, after he recited it for me, and all these things sort of came together.”

“Which was super fascinating, […] and I feel like it makes the script more alive and much more valid and true, and this is also what excites me in filmmaking: this exchange with the people I work with and what they bring to the film and how they help shape the film.”

Disappearing, with or without a trace

About disappearing, with or without a trace: This recurring motif “speaks of the reality of their situation”, says Tollenaere, and she witnessed it first hand during her research on the ground.

“People sometimes just completely disappeared, and I don’t know what happened to them and it really touched me a lot, so I wanted to include this in the film. It is a very precarious situation, and although there is a lot of lightness in the film […], I also wanted to bring out this reality of their situation, and the hardship of the situation and the inhumanness of the situation.”

Balancing hardship with warmth and humour

On finding the right balance between hardship and warmth: “I wanted to strike a balance between making a very political film and, on the other hand, [also having] a lightheartedness and a kind of humour in the film, and a playfulness – not to diminish this reality, au contraire, but actually to show these people’s resilience and their humanness.”

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