Neither seen nor known: “I wanted to surprise Isabelle Huppert”

Discover the first issue of the show “Vision d’avenir”, live from the Saint-Jean-de-Luz Festival.

Each day, First brings you to life the Saint-Jean de Luz 2026 international film festival by welcoming the teams of the films presented there on set.

And for this first issue, our guests are Isabelle Huppert and Marc Fitoussi for Neither seen nor knownwhich opens this 13th edition, and Sébastien Laudenbach and Camelia Jordana for the animated film Carmen, the rebel bird which revisits the famous opera by Georges Bizet.

Director Marc Fitoussi tells us about his reunion with Isabelle Huppert, whom he had already directed several times (notably in an episode of Dix pour cent), with an astonishing role specially written for her:

“I like to find Isabelle and imagine something that she hasn’t already played to amuse and surprise her. One day I said to myself that perhaps the big idea was to offer Isabelle the chance to play an extra, an actress who has never acted. She said yes to me before I started writing.”

“I wasn’t afraid, I was sure I was going to like the scenario“, explains Isabelle Huppert. “Marc Fitoussi is a great dialogue writer. The first thing with which you can get closer to a character, make him your own, is really through dialogue. And the dialogues were great, very rhythmic. They immediately announced the colors of the film, at the same time very funny, very cruel and sometimes quite melancholic.”

In the second part of the show, director Sébastien Laudenbach looks back on the genesis of his adaptation of Carmen in animated film:

“It all started from a discussion with a friend who loves opera and who said to me: hey, there are children in this opera, what would a Carmen look like from the children’s point of view. I told myself that this was a completely bizarre idea and that we were going to implement it. And this change of point of view is crucial.”

Camélia Jordana, who lends her voice to the famous gypsy, underlines the unfortunately modern dimension of this story, that of feminicide that the film has chosen to assume even though it is aimed at young audiences:

“Carmen is the most adapted opera in the world, she is one of the most famous heroines in the world, but her story is horribly banal. Some adaptations save Carmen, but in reality we are faced with a scourge which is that society cannot save women from men’s violence.”