Cannes (AFP)
The actress Hafsia Herzi, revealed in "The Seed and the Mule" in 2007, before multiplying the roles and then directing a first feature film two years ago, transforms the essay in Cannes with "Bonne Mère", for which she drew on her childhood memories, in the cities of Marseille.
The film delivers a sensitive account of the difficulties of a mother of a family in a large area of the Marseille city.
Featured in the "Un certain regard" section, it hits theaters in France on July 21.
"Bonne Mère", nickname of the Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde basilica which dominates Marseille, follows Nora (Halima Benhamed, for the first time in the cinema) who is raising her children and grandchildren on her own.
She combines jobs and worries, especially that of an eldest son in detention for whom she has to pay a lawyer.
This modest portrait also recreates the bustle of the port city and its art of resourcefulness through dialogues and many characters full of bite.
"In the northern districts of Marseille there are a lot of single mothers, single mothers and I wanted to pay tribute to these women," the 34-year-old director, herself raised by a left-behind mother, told AFP. alone with four children.
“Women carry a lot on their shoulders,” she says.
The shooting was carried out in the city in touch with drug trafficking where the director grew up, and where she maintains links, with exclusively non-professional actors: "for me, it was obvious (...) for bring credibility to the story "and" show faces that you are not used to seeing in the cinema ".
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The requirements have been redoubled.
There was a lot of rehearsal, human bonds to be made and frame work before we could shoot, mostly in one take.
An approach echoing Hafsia Herzi's own career: she herself started on screen without training, in "La Graine et le mulet" (2007) by Abdellatif Kechiche, which won her a prize in Venice. then a César for best female hope, and launched her career.
The thirty-something became a director two years ago with "You deserve a love" (2019), a romantic comedy shot with little money on today's Parisian youth, where she played the main role, well received by the critical.
For the rest, she hesitates: "I would very much like to shoot again in Marseille but not immediately. The directing is so hard psychologically and physically, you have to be inspired, to believe in it".
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