Déborah HASSOUN
Film director

Déborah received a writing grant for her next short film. 

What is your artistic background ?
Ten years before making this first short film, I had already been involved in documentary filmmaking, but my main passion is screenwriting, from which I have been making a living since I graduated from the European Audiovisual Writing Conservatory (CEEA) in 2005. As a cinema-lover, but also an avid fan of TV shows, my writing and my sense of rhythm, essential to comedy, owe a lot to the hours I spent in front of the small screen. This first production allowed me to go all the way to the end of a project, to unveil my universe, my colors and to develop a genre that is still too rare in France: the comedy ‘of the depressive’!   

How do you see your profession today ?
When I see the diversity of the short films selected at festivals, my outlook is full of hope. The future of French cinema is full of promise! Of course, making a feature film is an obstacle course, but we are in a country that supports culture like no other in Europe. The auteur comedy that I would like to make is not yet sufficiently present on the screens, but the spectators are there, I could feel it during the screening of my short film. And every time I receive the affirmation of an audience, it encourages me to keep going.   

How do you see yourself in five years ? In 10 years ?
I hope to be on the set of my first feature film! But I will still continue to be a screenwriter on other directors' projects. For others or myself, I will continue to write female characters whose aim in life is not necessarily to find true love. Women are complex and multiple, but I want to write films in which they are also funny.  

This interview was conducted in 2020
Photo credit: Kamila K. Stanley