Alice Winocour – director – Maryland

FRED’s Bénédicte Prot interviews Alice Winocour, who presented her latest work Maryland in the Un Certain Regard section of the 68th Cannes Film Festival.

French director Alice Winocour talks about her continued exploration, in her second feature, of the theme of the dysfunctional body. She explains why she had Matthias Schoenaerts in mind specifically when she wrote the part and how they worked together to represent the borderline state of a soldier back from war, to the point that her actor became the character.

MARYLAND: A soldier suffering from PTSD (Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone’s Matthias Schoenaerts, also starring in Thomas Vinterberg, Tom Hooper and Luca Guadagnino’s newest projects), hired to work security in a big mansion and protect the lady of the house (Diane Kruger) and her kid, becomes a walking paranoid bomb, in this enclosed space, as he manages to save to day.