Sophie Letourneur

Filmmaker

May 2023

Portrait of Sophie Letourneur
  • Cinema
  • Cities
  • Houston
"I believe it would be very compelling to sketch a portrait of a Texan who wants to have a vasectomy, and this plot would allow me to express my views on the inescapable, essential topic of abortive rights in the USA."
Who?
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I came to filmmaking by way of the plastic arts. It was at ENSAD that I began making installations, and developing writing techniques by creating soundtrack montages. Next, I started making films for cinema, usually from an autobiographical standpoint. I am now working on an autofiction-based trilogy, which will mark a new transitional period in my work. I have greatly enjoyed finding, leading and filming other people who can embody and appropriate my own history on screen, and I now wish to use characters as inspiration for writing. I may someday return to autofiction, but I currently feel that I have gone as far as I can with this process and taken many detours in allowing myself to do so. When filming midwives for Enormous, I felt the need for this new approach more clearly, and I found the idea for a film series whose content would be fueled by the person and place inspiring me at a particular time, whereby I would not need to be familiar with them beforehand. I then received the proposal from Villa Albertine, which has fit perfectly into this context. This project will be the first part of my new approach. 

 

After graduating from the Duperré Design School and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), Sophie Letourneur directed her first short, La Tête dans le vide, in 2004. Spurred on by the success of a further two medium-length films, Manue Bolonaise and Roc et Canyon, which were shown at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, the Brive Film Festival, and the Côté Court Festival in Pantin, she shot her first feature-length film, the critically-acclaimed Chicks, which was released in 2010. In 2011, she premiered The Shady Sailor at Locarno, while also using the occasion to film Les Coquillettes, which was then included in the festival program in 2012 and released in French theaters in March 2013. The following year, she brought to life a farcical fable set in rural France, Gaby Baby Doll, starring Lolita Chammah and Benjamin Biolay. In 2019, she directed Enormous, starring Marina Foïs and Jonathan Cohen, in which she explored the vicissitudes of maternity, from conception to childbirth. Voyages en Italie, her fifth feature film, will be released in late March. 

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In partnership with

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Les Films Hatari

Les Films Hatari is an independent French film and television program production company founded in 2002. Its ambition is to support films that seal a committed narrative with strong cinematography, with strong potential for financing and marketing on the French, European and extra-European markets. French. Since its birth, Les films Hatari has produced around fifty films, most of which have been screened at festivals around the world.