Marine Atlan: “La Gradiva could not have seen the light of day in a profitable system”

A first feature film of 2h30, twenty young unknown actors and a school trip to Pompeii… Having left Cannes with the Critics’ Week Grand Prize, Marine Atlan and her producer Inès Daïen Dasi tell the story of the birth of a free, collective and political work.

Even before its presentation in Cannes, La Gradiva was one of those films that we heard about between two screenings. We passed the message under the radar. The first feature film by Marine Atlan, director of photography who moved on to directing, has more than kept its promise. This story of a school trip to Pompeii, where today’s high school students find themselves facing the ruins, the bodies petrified by Vesuvius and their own dizziness, caused one of the real French excitements of the last festival, to the point of winning the Grand Prix of the Critics’ Week. La Gradivaproduced by Inès Daïen Dasi, arrives especially at a time when French cinema is looking with concern at what it can still finance, protect, transmit. Its duration, its casting of unknowns, its literary writing, everything that could have weakened it has become its strength. Hence this simple question: how do we make, today, a film which seems to have so little reason to exist within the logic of the market? Marine Atlan and Inès Daïen Dasi answer us.

FIRST: Let’s go back to the beginning. How did you meet?
INÈES DAÏEN DASI: It was in 2016, when I was doing my job well! (Laughs.) I went to see the screenings of the Fémis short films and I loved it Green Loves that Marine had made. I told her that I would like to work with her, even if I wasn’t a producer yet. As soon as I became one, I thought of her and suggested to Simon Rieth that we hire her on Our ceremonies as cinematographer. She was also the director of photography for my second feature, Drama Queensdirected by Alexis Langlois.
MARINE ATLAN: For my part, I was offered to take over……