Stéphanie Gillard - Villa Albertine

Cinema

Chicago

“We’d discover life on the reservation through their eyes, and we’d meet up with them and other veterans of earlier wars in the history of the United States, to tell a story that repeats itself and goes beyond them. To tell the story of their difficulties and their desire to find their place again.“

Who?

My films may seem very different in terms of subject matter, but they always echo a particular genre or cinematic universe, with common themes and, above all, an approach, a way of working and thinking about documentary filmmaking. Each of my films has explored group dynamics. I’ve always told stories of transmission, whether in a Tuareg school, a Lakota Sioux ride, or with French West Indies young fencers, female soccer champions or Cameroonian supporters. It’s because sharing, collective memory, History and stories, the question of knowing where we come from in order to decide where we’re going, how we build ourselves, at any age, the links between generations… all these questions drive me. It’s my way of seeing the world, in this permanent exchange, these families, these groups, these are the people I want to film because I feel close to them in their values, in their way of approaching life, and they make up a world I love: modest and generous men and women who always want to move forward despite the difficulties.

Born in 1973 in Paris.

After a master’s degree in law, she joined ENSAV (Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’audiovisuel) in Toulouse. She then worked as an assistant director and producer with Les Films à Lou, Agat films, Maïa Films or La Ménagerie. She produced and directed her first film “Une Histoire de Ballon”, about the meeting of oral tradition and soccer in Africa, which was broadcasted on ARTE and obtained the SCAM star. She then directed 3 documentaries for television and 2 feature documentaries released in theaters: The Ride (Tribeca Film Festival) and The squad (FF Angoulême, CPH: Dox, IFI Dublin…).

Since 2022 she has taught documentary for foreign student in the Summer College of La FEMIS.

What?

In my travels through reservations while making The Ride, I’ve met veterans of all American wars from the Second World War onwards. Over decades, many young Lakota join the army. They leave not yet fully grown up. One structure, the army, replaces another, the family. After 2 or 3 tours of duty, they come back and have to integrate into professional life and manage a household. But before they left, they’d never had to manage this adult life. It’s a pattern that’s been repeated for generations and partly explains the soldiers’ idleness, depression and difficult reintegration (to which we can add the army’s disinterest and disengagement once their services have been rendered). After The Ride, I’d like to return to the Standing Rock Reservation (and maybe Cheyenne River, Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations) to do a film about young Lakota veterans, their lives, their aspirations, their doubts and their fragility. We’d discover life on the reservation through their eyes, and we’d meet up with them and other veterans of earlier wars in the history of the United States, to tell a story that repeats itself and goes beyond them. To tell the story of their difficulties and their desire to find their place again. I want to understand these men and women, what motivated them, how they perceive their military years. How they fit into a country built on the ashes of their people? Why do they feel the need to take up arms for it? How does they deal with racism and the rejection of those for whom they went to fight? How did each they experience the departure, the war, the return, the relationship to death, to life, to the reservation, to both the Lakota nation and the United States nation? It’s the ambivalence of their lives that will lie at the heart of the film.

Where?

I guess I am linked to USA in a certain way. I have been a film lover since I am a kid, especially of Hollywood classics. And my older sister decided to leave France for USA when I was 12. She is a US citizen for more than 30 years now and lives in New York City. This decision was a shock to me, especially at a time when I was building my critical thinking through watching films. And I guess it was the original point of my personal interest to US history. This situation made me wonder what was her attraction to this country. Like if there was a world and questions to explore in between the films I would watch, History as it is told through movies, and reality. And my purpose through The Ride and through The Road Home project is to question the traces of History in today’s life.

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