Between 1997, the year of his first feature film, and the one that concerns us in the rigor of the pandemic,

Francois Ozon (Paris, 1967)

has directed more than 20 films.

Almost one per year.

And, as he likes to say while citing Truffaut, each new job against the previous one.

'Verano del 85'

, his latest film that opens this Friday, has nothing to do with

'Gracias a Dios'

(2018).

The first is a luminous cinema built from the memory of a happy and imaginary time, the second, remember, was the touchstone of all the controversies due to its denunciation of pedophilia within the Church.

"Contradicting oneself", he points out, "is what gives meaning to work and even to life."

Presented at the last San Sebastian festival after becoming a box office success in his country, 'Verano del 85' is an enthusiastic celebration of almost everything: openly homosexuality, adolescence as a state of soul and, hurrying, of cinema without rules, completely free.

A moment from the movies 'Summer of 85'

It would seem that the film is just the opposite of what we are experiencing.

Against the cloister, a tape in broad daylight ... It is, of course, nothing sought.

But I suspect that your success in France has to do with precisely this.

Above all, it is a film against darkness that I immersed myself in when shooting 'Thank God'.

I wanted to take a vacation from myself.

I wanted fresh air, youth ... And what things are, my wish has coincided with the wish of so many who wish to regain the sensation and touch of their skin at a time when we cannot touch ... Is it An autobiographical film? All of them are. Yes. The emotions of the film are my emotions if that's what you mean. For a Spaniard, the 80s are the years of the Transition, the end of the dictatorship, the freedom and many doubts.

And for a Frenchman? For me, who am French, these are the years of my adolescence.

But I think it's also the teenage years for a lot of people who may not have been teenagers then.

They were a few years in which freedom was discovered, sexual freedom, and, suddenly, in 1987, AIDS.

The passion I lived with for much of that decade immediately turned to fear.

And those two feelings exemplify very well what early youth is.

They were wonderful years that, without interruption, turned into the worst ultra-liberal nightmare in which capitalism showed its cruellest face. On several occasions it has said that it is fascinated by adolescence ... Adolescence is the moment of the first time .

And that is fascinating.

A 50-year-old love story has a liturgy and it is possible to anticipate what will happen in each moment.

That doesn't happen with first love.

It seems obvious and it is, but it should be remembered. How present is the urge to present homosexuality in total freedom and against all taboos and clichés in your work? 'Verano del 85' is the movie that I would have liked to see when I was a teenager.

Homosexuality has always been associated with guilt, death, pain ... At least at that time. And do you think that is no longer the case? The problem is representation.

That is something that is still very much within society.

That my film is seen as something revolutionary or that homosexuality is simply talked about because of him when it is nothing more than a love story shows it.

I imagine that for a young man in a big city it is no longer a problem, but if you look deeper, in rural areas, it continues to be a battlefield.

The homosexual is asked and is still required to be discreet.

Normality weighs. Normality? Yes, normality understood as everything ... that does not interest me.

The only thing that interests me is the difference. Do you think that something like a MeToo movement for homosexuality would be necessary to denounce the humiliations suffered? Without a doubt. What do you think of the rules established by the Oscars to expand diversity? still so much.

I've had a lot of trouble at work.

Anyway, and as a general impression, I think that art does not admit of rules.

The cinema is a space for freedom ... All those norms that come from the United States all they achieve is to apply a new form of censorship.

No, you cannot establish a percentage for some, another percentage for others.

What if blacks, what if Arabs, what if women ... No, art does not understand percentage or quotas At one point in the film, one of the lovers tells the other that they never have enough of him .

Ozon never has enough of making movies.

making movies is a pleasure for me.

If I suffered, I would make a movie every ten years.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • movie theater

  • culture

  • LGTBI

  • France

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