Noémie Saglio
Noémie is a French film director and screenwriter known for Toute première fois (2015), Connasse, princesse des coeurs (2015) and Telle mère, telle fille (2017). She also run the Netflix’s show The Hook Up Plan, an eight-episode romantic comedy series.
What are the origins of your creation?
I think all my creation comes from my childhood and family… It origins in everything I find weird and familiar at the same time. I call it the art of « well observed » and this is how I create all my characters and stories, just by watching people around me with an open mind. I like to study people, the way they act, the way they move. I can be very weird to hang out with, as I suddenly will just start observing and taking mental notes on everybody.
What it's like to be an artist woman nowadays?
Seems weird for me to answer that question as I hardly consider myself an artist. I long to be one, one day, like a child dream. For the moment, I am only playing. I like my job. I tell stories, people recognise themselves in it, I make them laugh and relate for a little while with characters they like.
I don’t feel « arrived at destination » yet. There is so much to do! I could go so much deeper! Or maybe this is the only thing that makes me an artist: I feel like I haven’t done any real work of Art… yet! But I believe I will, yes I do.
Anyhow, today seems a great time to be an artist woman. We finally can raise our voice any way we like. Of course there is still the odd misogynistic remark you, the odd judgment, but I find myself very easy on that. When someone speaks this way, I think « poor him, he has been raised that way, he must feel so stuck, I hope he can find a way to liberate himself from this historical pattern ». I don’t believe in fighting for our rights, I believe in love. Things are moving. It might seem slow but what counts is that it’s happening.
It isn’t easy for anyone, men or woman, that History has gone this way. But now is the time to peace out everything between men and women.
Can you imagine being a man? All this ancestral pressure to be strong and powerful? I would hate it!
I keep changing, or at least trying to. And I know some things I try to change will take me a lifetime. It will be MY story. I am definitely becoming a woman, and it will continue until I die.
As Simone de Beauvoir said, were you born as a woman or did you become a woman?
This, to me, is an endless question. I am in fact writing a film around it. What makes us become a woman?
I was raised in Senegal where the boys around the age of 13 have to do an initiation trip to the sacred forrest. When they come back, they are men.
Rites of passage have always been an obsession of mine. What do we have in occidental countries? When do we become a man, a woman? Why is there never such rituals as a woman? I try to do some with my daughter, rites of acceptance, rites of tears, rites of moments together, rites of moments for her… so she can feel that she grows from baby girl to girl… into the great woman that she will be! I thought I became a woman when I first confronted my dad, but that wasn’t it. I thought it again when I first had sex, when I had my first baby, when I had the second one, when I got married, when I got divorced, when I bought a house… But none of these moments, as powerful in happiness or sadness as they might have been, transformed me as deep as the overall path of life.
Walking alongside with myself. Such a weird trip isn’t it?
I keep changing, or at least trying to. And I know some things I try to change will take me a lifetime. It will be MY story. I am definitely becoming a woman, and it will continue until I die.
Who is your biggest Muse?
My biggest muse is Love. I try to find Her everywhere. And yes, she’s a woman.
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