Mia Hansen-Love, Carine Tardieu, Magaly Richard-Serrano and Jean-Pascal Hattu. Three women and one man; profession: filmmakers. Four films, four newcomers. Making cinema in France, a country that has one of the most traditional cinema industries in the world. These new directors, each one in their own way, trailed different paths before making these first films. Most of them have made shorts, some have studied cinema, and all have faced the challenge of telling a story in 90 minutes.

They chose contemporary narratives, close to reality. Relationships between lovers, couples, mother and daughter; passion and love in all of their idiosyncrasies. Building an idea for the first film – something about which the cinema production is implacable in its demands for certainties and its assertive decisions – among a reference for the cinema, requires much determination.

Maybe this new-coming spirit can be best translated by the words of the young director Mia Hansen-Love, 27 years, in an interview to the website Evene.fr about her film Tout Est Pardonné: “This story has lived in me for a very long time, and the wish to write it has been around before the cinema. It could have manifested itself differently, but it found film as a place to exist. Even if it is not autobiographical, this story defines me. It identifies me and expresses who I am.”

Maybe there are four films, but maybe it is also a meeting with Carine, Magaly, Jean-Pascal and Mia. A pleasure. Come back always. (D.A)