31/08/2022 - The young Belgian filmmaker who won the Best Documentary Magritte for Petit Samedi is wrapping filming on her first fiction feature

Director Paloma Sermon Daï (© Frederic Sierakowski/Isopix)

This week will see Paloma Sermon Daï wrapping filming on her first fiction feature Il pleut dans la maison [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paloma Sermon-Daï
film profile]. The filmmaker previously turned heads with her debut feature film, the documentary Petit Samedi [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paloma Sermon Daï
film profile], which was selected in Berlin and awarded the Best Documentary Magritte back in February. The movie observed and explored the relationship - by turns flawed and symbiotic - between Sermon Daï’s mother and brother: an older sibling suffering from an opioid addiction which dictates his daily existence as well as his emotional and family life.

With her new film, the director is staying close to her documentary roots whilst allowing herself a first taste of fictional freedom, in order to depict the scorching summer experienced by a brother and sister. Left to themselves in the absence of their mother, Makenzy and Purdey support one another in their squalid family home. With a hot and stormy summer ahead of them, they find themselves torn between adolescence and the adult life which awaits them.

For the two lead roles, Paloma Sermon Daï has reunited with the two young non-professional actors she previously directed in her graduate film. Makenzy Lombes and Purdey Bloquiau play Makenzy and Purdey, character roles which see two personalities contending with issues which are different from their own, but whose outlooks and airs are basically theirs. The filmmaker worked at length with the pair during acting and writing workshops ahead of the film shoot in order to adapt the dialogue and devise scenes and situations. Improvisation continued to feature heavily on set, resulting in several sequences which didn’t appear in the screenplay, but were instead born out of the actors’ and technical crew’s own inspiration.

The movie is also heavily anchored in its location, the Eau d’Heure complex of lakes in Wallonia, which is a region marked by high unemployment but also strong tourist activity.

"This move into fiction afforded me great freedom of expression", the director confided. "I tried to stay true to my filmic approach, by telling a totally invented story lent authenticity by its actors and location. This hybrid aspect was very important to me."

Il pleut dans la maison is produced by Sebastien Andres and Alice Lemaire on behalf of Michigan Films, with the support of the Wallonia Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre and its lightweight production subsidies. This isn’t the first time the fledgling company has signed up to this initiative, since it previously produced Simon Coulibaly Gillard’s first feature Aya [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Simon Coulibaly Gillard
film profile] under the same conditions, which was presented in Cannes’ ACID selection in July 2021, and shot another film supported by the initiative, Camping du lac [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Éléonore Saintagnan
film profile] by Eleonore Saintagnan, at the beginning of the summer (read our news). Il pleut dans la maison is co-produced by Kidam (France) and Visuatlantics (Belgium). In addition to support from the FAC, the movie was also awarded backing from the Brussels Audiovisual Centre.

(Translated from French)