Dream On: Céline Sciamma

A film begins during a long dreaming process for French writer-director Céline Sciamma: notes are taken disparately, sometimes over years, while the story forms in her head. But as soon as the writing begins, a lucid methodology sets in until the ideas become flesh. Sciamma's plots make the line between friendship and desire a thin one, unfolding the lives of girls and women who grow up and fall in love. But there is no naivety here. Rather, her female characters act with a definite boldness, affirming themselves under the gaze of others. Perhaps this has to do with the limits of dreaming more than anything else, for in Sciamma's own words: "little girls don't have dreams, they must have plans." With her fifth feature Petite Maman in this year's Competition, Céline treats us to a talk that bridges the worlds of myth and desire and the realities of writing and directing.