INTERVIEW
A prize in Berlin, after a first distinction for its realization at Sundance and the César for best short film in France. If we had told Maïmouna Doucouré, when she was about ten years old, that the first film she was going to make, Maman (s), would have been such a success, she probably would not have believed it. At the microphone of Europe 1 Thursday, the director returned to her journey. If she does not know the date when she knew she wanted to make a career of it, "I felt very early on that I had a mad love for cinema", recounts Maïmouna Doucouré.
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"I didn't have a lot of models"
“I found it to be a very poignant way of telling stories. I like the idea of having images in my head and transcribing them,” she explains. Except that, born in 1985, Maïmouna Doucouré grew up in front of a television and a cinema where few people looked like her. “I didn't have a lot of role models, I think subconsciously I self-inhibited,” she says.
"My mother saw me go to the theater and write stories and one day she said to me 'you have to know that this is not for us'", says the director, detailing this "us". "Not for us blacks, not for us suburbanites, not for us poor people. I think that's what she meant, because the stories are usually very stereotypical with very little truth after all, and we didn't recognize ourselves in it, ”continues Maïmouna Doucouré.
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"To think that it is possible"
"I did not have a reflection in this mirror that I was looking at", she sums up, judging that "terrible" to build today. "I find it important that there is a plurality of stories and that small children can open their imaginations," she adds. "Seeing a woman President of the Republic, that can allow a young girl to project herself and to say to herself that it is possible".
Speaking of lived experience, Maïmouna Doucouré does it in Mignonnes , whose release has been postponed because of the health crisis. The film paints a deep and sensitive portrait of an eleven-year-old Parisian girl, torn between the rules of a polygamous Senegalese family and the tyranny of social networks and selfies. On this last point, Maïmouna Doucouré warns about the sexualization of the image of women. "These are young girls who have been bottle-fed by the image of the woman objected with pornography everywhere all the time", explains the director, saying for example that the body of the naked woman can be used "in an advertisement to sell a water bottle".
"These are young girls who have been bottle-fed with images of the objectized woman"
Maïmouna Doucouré is the director of "Mignonnes", her first film which hits theaters next Wednesday. # Europe1 # CultureMédiaspic.twitter.com / VtlECc0MVM
"These are young girls who have been nourished by the image of the objectized woman"
A situation that is portrayed on social networks. "When we see that the more sexy we are as a woman, the more flesh we show, the more likes we have, at 11 we don't understand all the mechanisms. But we imitate to have the same result and that's dangerous, ”recalls Maïmouna Doucouré.