“Call My Agent!”’s Ophélia Kolb plays a struggling mother on the edge of society in “The Courageous” (“Les Courageux”), Swiss-American Jasmin Gordon’s first foray into narrative feature filmmaking, which stages its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 10.
Co-produced by Maximage and RTS Radio Télévision Suisse, the family drama revolves around Jule, a single mother of three young children who lives in a small town surrounded by majestic mountains and lush forests. But her life is not as peaceful. Burdened by her past mistakes and a world that offers no second chances, she’s resolved to prove to her children—and to herself—that she still has worth.
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Born in Los Angeles, Gordon studied Literature and Photography in the U.S. and France and later graduated from Stanford University’s Documentary Film MA program in 2006.
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Her narrative and non-fiction shorts have aired on television (PBS Independent Lens, RTS) and screened at such festivals as SXSW, Slamdance, Encounters Film Festival, Festival Européen du Film Court de Brest, Regard Festival au Saguenay and AFI Docs, picking up awards along the way.
In an interview with Variety, she spoke about the rewards and challenges she faced in making her first full-length fiction film.
How did your background in documentary filmmaking inform your directing style in this film? Did you find it easier, in a way, to make a fiction film?
My background in documentary film is absolutely essential to my process as a fiction director. When you make documentaries, you have to be armed with an incredible amount of patience and humility because what happens in real life always has the upper hand over your creative process. You have to invest deeply in the relationships you have with the people you are filming. You always have to stay flexible and think on your feet when things don’t go according to plan. These are all qualities that are just as useful when making fiction films. I find both genres equally complex; they just present different challenges. It took me five years to make ‘The Courageous,’ from conception to post-production, and it required a whole lot of passion and determination which are the same ingredients needed to make a documentary film. I also notice the documentary director in me when I see how obsessed I am with naturalistic performances and how much I like capturing things as they happen spontaneously around us while filming on location.
French actress Ophélia Kolb gives a riveting performance as Jule. Was she always your first choice in casting her? What do you think she brings to the film?
I fell in love with Ophélia Kolb from our very first meeting. I thought of her towards the beginning of our casting process and was completely convinced that she was the “Jule” we were looking for. Not only is she an incredibly talented actress, but is also someone with this luminous and charismatic quality. She was the perfect person to bring the necessary empathy and warmth to this unusual female portrait.
Why did you choose this particular topic to be your first feature? What inspired you to co-write this particular story? Is this based on some actual events?
Telling a story about a woman and mother at odds with society and its conventions, someone who tries to stay free even in the most impossible of circumstances, is very important to me both personally and politically. I wanted to portray a woman who exists in the grey area between morality and immorality, someone complex and courageous. Someone who challenges our ideas of what a good mother or a good woman should look like. I often feel like we don’t see enough of these kinds of women on screen. In terms of the origins of the idea, several elements and themes in this story come from my own experience but a lot of it is imagined. My co-writer Julien Bouissoux and I like to gather anecdotes, scenes, ideas about characters and images, things that move us and occupy our thoughts, and then construct a story organically from them. We have a lot of confidence in the way stories can have their own autonomy — how they can become something that is ours and also isn’t ours, something familiar and at the same time also surprising to us.
They say working with children is among the most challenging of all in filmmaking (aside from animals). How was it to work with your young actors? Did they have any acting experience?
What they say about working with children is true! It really was an extremely challenging experience, but it was also tremendously rewarding. Children bring so much authenticity, wisdom, and joy with them— and for me that really makes everything worthwhile. My casting director Minna Prader and I met with approximately 80 children and quickly had a sort of a gut feeling about our three young talents. They had such a presence and such deep thoughts about life and their characters. We really were so touched by them. Jasmine (who plays Claire) had been in a few school theater productions before, but our two boys Paul and Arthur didn’t have any acting experience at all. All three of them revealed themselves to be natural talents and really gave the film so much dimension.
Switzerland has a far better safety net than in the U.S. and yet am sure there are people like Jule, who fall through the cracks despite the country’s support system. What did you want to convey about the social services in Switzerland?
Switzerland is a very prosperous and well-functioning country with a remarkable political system. However, there are people who exist under the radar and below a comfortable standard of living. These are people who struggle to make ends meet. From my insider/outsider perspective, Switzerland still feels like it’s very standardized and focused on the norm: on how we should be and what we should do…which can be very challenging for people who are different. I feel it’s important to talk about this even in seemingly picture-perfect parts of the world. Having said all of this, we actually did try to write ‘The Courageous’ in a geographically unspecific way, with the goal of emphasizing the universality of the story: a story about the importance of freeing oneself from the expectation and judgement of others.
I could not help but marvel at the beauty of their surroundings. There’s even a waterfall behind their apartment! I felt that despite their troubles, they at least had a clean river to swim in nearby and fruit orchards. What did nature represent for you in this film?
Yes, the lower Valais region really is very beautiful. But for many Swiss people, this region is actually very atypical for Switzerland because it’s actually less groomed than other areas in the country. This was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to shoot the film in a place where the natural world is omnipresent and really wild. I wanted the audience to have the feeling that nature is almost taking over the small town: to see nature as a presence, a symbolic element that attracts Jule and speaks to her. It acts as a reminder of her (and our) inherent freedom.
