We met actresses Aïssatou Diallo Sagna, Suzy Bemba and Esther Gohourou who shine in Catherine Corsini’s Homecoming, presented in Competing at the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
The 76th Cannes Film Festival highlights a number of high-end French productions as part of the Competition every year. Two years after her impressive The Divide, which swept the Queer Palm, Catherine Corsini is back in competition this year with a charming and captivating feature, Homecoming (Le Retour), set in Corsica. We were delighted to sit down with the main cast of the film, consisting of César-winning Aïssatou Diallo Sagna (Kheididja), Suzy Bemba (Jessica) and Esther Gohourou (Farah) for an interview.
Film Fest Report: How do you feel after the screening ? What type of feedback have you received?
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna: We have had a lot of positive feedback, either when I am at parties, or even on the streets, people stop me to tell me that they really liked the film so it is so nice. It feels good to see the film being screened and being seen!
Film Fest Report: This movie is about family, relationships and different generations. What did you take away from this story, what have you learned from it ?
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna: It was certainly a very enriching experience. In each family there are secrets, unsaid difficulties, it all has to do with communication. In this family, the communication somehow does not exist anymore. Clearly the mother lost some part of herself when her husband died and she entirely focused on being able to educate both her girls. This return to Corsica forces her to break silence, relearn how she can communicate, how she can speak. I think this really echoes anything that can happen in our personal lives, family lives, love lives and work lives. In a way it shows how important it is to be able to speak those things in order to grow.
“Outside of cinema, I still work as a caretaker […] I know we are all equal when it comes to facing death and illness, which helps me be really rooted.”
Film Fest Report: All three of you are debuting careers in cinema, what did your personal and professional experience bring to the film ? Especially Aïssatou, what did your experience as a care professional bring to your experience as an actress ?
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna: I still work in care and I think it gives me a real sense of balance. Obviously I have expectations in the film industry, especially after my César and after The Divide (Catherine Corsini, 2021). I really wanted to be able to act in a different film and in a different part. The more I shoot and the more I work in the industry the more I like it, but I feel no urgency in taking the projects that arrive to me. In a way I feel my profession gives me a lot of strength. I know we are nothing here on Earth, we are all equal when it comes to facing death and illness, and it helps me to be really rooted in my normal life. Also my profession as a caretaker, actually changes my relationship to what a body is. I am used to helping people wash themselves, so it especially helped me with the intimate love scene that we have in the movie with the character of Cédric. I feared this scene, but when it came to shooting it, there was a shot of the male character naked but in a way, I didn’t feel any kind of shock or anything because it was just a body and I am so used to seeing bodies in my profession.
Suzy Bemba: Outside the film industry, I was at school, I did go for a first year of medical school, but when I entered the second semester at medical school I knew that I had not done well so I decided that I was going to contact again an agent that my mum contacted when I was a young girl. That was in April and I said to myself: “There is no way that I can get good marks so maybe I can get a good summer job”. I shot this film called Kandisha by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury. Then I went back to medical school. There was another very difficult exam at the end of the first year and my marks actually enabled me to go to a physiotherapy school. In fact I didn’t go because the director of the school asked me to choose between the film industry and the school and I said to myself: “Okay I want to go for cinema for a while”. I have another two years with this examination where I will be able, if I wanted to, to go to physiotherapy school. I don’t know what I am going to do but I love being in films, I love to shoot, I love the experience, but I was lacking the student experience so much that I decided to do a remote study about physiology. I really want to learn, I feel the necessity to do it so I am doing both at the moment and I think I am going to continue, let’s see what happens!
Esther Gohourou: I am still in highschool really and I have a normal life together with cinema. On Monday, I am going to go back home and to school… Even if I don’t particularly want it.
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna: Yes, you are going back to school!!!
Esther Gohourou: I am basically a normal girl, I am by no means big headed, I am very grateful for what was given to me and I cannot imagine myself being like: me, myself and I. I really don’t think that my personality is going to change. I resemble the character of Farah, she is really what I am like in real life. So I felt it was an easy part, this was my second in the film industry, but I feel that some other parts can be more difficult.
Film Fest Report: In the movie, your performances as a family feel really natural, how did you prepare for that?
Aïssatou Diallo Sagna: The shooting started in September, but all along August we actually were together almost all the time because we had body coaching and acting coaching. We did improvise a lot, we talked about the scenes of the film but not that much. We also used our personal experience for it, me as a mother, and both the girls have sisters in real life so that helped to nurture the characters. We matched really quickly and it was quite easy to imagine ourselves as a family. We spoke a lot about how we were going to look, about our hair, about dreadlocks, wigs or no wigs… We laughed a lot about those aspects and that created some kind of bond in real life. Even when the family members could not communicate, nevertheless there was a bond.
Suzy Bemba: It was a really interesting and enriching experience to be able to improvise together with Aïssatou, Esther, and Lomane, who is playing Gaia in the film. We talked a lot about the scenes, imagining what was going to happen, what was happening before the film and after it. This helped us find some kind of common language also physically, so when we got to the set, we were really conscious of what our character was and we did not have to work on how we talked to each other, how we touched each other because we had already worked on these aspects before the shoot. For all the intimate scenes with Lomane, we worked all this so we already shared some kind of closeness together that really helped us.
Film Fest Report: The concept of memory in the film is very important, the lack of it can create more grief and make it harder to move on. I wanted to talk about the memories that were created for the characters in this film. How do you think that they evolved with this new set of memories?
Suzy Bemba: When Jessica arrives in Corsica, she already knows that she is searching for something, she asks herself a lot of questions, and she has some rage to find some answer. She doesn’t really know exactly what. There is this interrogation about her family history but she doesn’t know that she is going to fall in love and that she is going to discover her sexuality. When she is leaving Corsica, she has one version of the story. She says in the film that without any memory it’s impossible to move forward because you are confronted with a void that you need to fill. That summer she discovered one version of the story, it is a coming of age period for her, she is becoming an adult and at the same time she is becoming really assertive when she confronts her mother for example. There are some extreme scenes in the way she behaves but she needed that to assert herself.
“In Corsica, you immediately feel how hostile this scenery can be […] and this frees you as an actress.”
Film Fest Report: How did you work in the location, Corsica being a beautiful place, very wild and almost a character, how was it for you working there?
Suzy Bemba: This location was really important for me. It is an island and when you arrive on the boat, you immediately feel how hostile this scenery can be, the sea choking into the mountains, there is something really extreme in it. As we shot it was the summer and we didn’t have much clothes on so we were directly in contact with the elements, the insects, the row and wild nature. And I know that Lomane for instance was really much helped by the rawness of the scenery to get out all the animality that was needed for her character. I feel that in a way such scenery and the confrontation with the elements frees you as actresses. It wouldn’t be the same with a green background !
Film Fest Report: About acting and the way you feel about your career, what are your projects?
Suzy Bemba: I don’t know what I want to but I know that it has changed a lot because now I am also starring in international movies, I am going to be in the next Yorgos Lanthimos movie and the next Anthony Chen movie, it is really nice to go abroad and see how other people work. For me the most important thing is to work with people that I truly believe in, that tell stories that I need or that I needed, because I think there is a lack of representation. I don’t think it is a duty but it is necessary for me to know that every role that I take care of -because I really think that it is about giving care to something that is not yet created – I need to be 100% in love with the character and the screenplay. I don’t know where I see myself but I am excited for what’s to come!
Acknowledgements: Gary Walsh.
