NYFF 2024: Direct Action | Interview with Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell

Guillaume Cailleau, a French filmmaker, and Ben Russell, an American filmmaker, lived with and filmed members of the Zone to Defend (ZAD) at Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France), a collective with self-sufficient resources whose goal is to disrupt and prevent corporations from building on and destroying land—in 2018, they successfully blocked off the construction of a new airport that was planned to be built in the area, which was widely reported on.

But the filmmakers go further to understand the collective beyond their achievement: while the title, Direct Action, refers to the strategy of active protest employed by the collective, it can also be read as a literal reference to the film’s style. Its three-and-a-half hours of runtime comprise long takes of members’ everyday activities: forging tools, feeding sheep, rebuilding houses—all the action it takes to live in and maintain a self-sufficient community. 

Cailleau and Russell spent approximately 100 days over a period of 14 months living with the collective (besides the two filmmakers, their sound recordist was the only other crew member present). Through this sheer exposure, Direct Action becomes a uniquely empathetic—and meditative—portrait of a collective living together for a common cause, one that shows the day-to-day efforts that sustain a community in the long term.

How did you decide to shoot a film about the collective?

Guillaume Cailleau: I grew up next to the place, and I studied very close to it, although I left the country before the group was formed. I never went before Ben proposed that we make a trip there. In France, this place has been very mediatic, so it has been in the news, and has been very present as a rebellion case.

Ben Russell: It was a moment during the pandemic, so I wasn’t able to travel, but that’s when I first heard about the ZAD. The way people described it was always with a certain amount of awe, but also in the past tense—as something that had happened, as opposed to a thing that was still happening. Once we understood what it was, and that it still existed, making a film in a place where a struggle had been successful felt like a really great place to begin.

Why did you choose the Zone to Defend (ZAD) in Notre-Dame-des-Landes?

Ben Russell: I came to the ZAD in part because I’ve been thinking about living collectively for a long time and have made works in different kinds of collective spaces, like tiny villages or cults or underground labor communities. I’ve never been able to parse out the logistics or emotional rationale of starting a commune or a collective, because without some bigger umbrella, those things are sort of self-serving or more inward-directed. What’s striking about this place is that everybody who lives there is in service to this larger cause, which is ecological militantism, not only because they want to live with other people.

How long did you spend living with the collective?

Guillaume Cailleau: We spent more or less 100 days on site: we lived there, cooked there, cleaned the house with them, and shot the film as well.

Ben Russell: We came, on average, 10 days every two months. Because the ZAD has a general policy of welcoming visitors and not calling them visitors, but participants, it meant that our presence there had to be engaged—not just in a distanced, observational mode—but in an actively involved position. I think if we had just gone for a continuous 100 days, it would be a really different thing: we wouldn’t have understood for ourselves what time felt like in a specifically agricultural terrain, which is seasonal and not monthly.

What makes the ZAD in Notre-Dame-des-Landes unique as a community?

Ben Russell: That has to do with the strength of the community. There’s not a question of one’s authenticity, there’s just a question of one’s commitment in terms of being there: you can be as engaged as you want to be and you’ll be accepted on that level, and that feels like one of the reasons why it has been successful—it doesn’t differentiate between longevity of commitment, but accepts what people say they’re going to do based on what they’re doing.

What type of footage were you seeking during your time there?

Guillaume Cailleau: On the first visit we did not film at all, it was a small test to get the feeling of the pace, and also a 10 day visit to understand what the space was and how it felt. The rhythm of the space defined what we could access and how fast. Seeking, for footage, is not the right word, because we basically collect what is in front of us—we’re not trying to provoke something which is not there.

Ben Russell: We didn’t do multiple takes, except for maybe two or three instances. The virtue of spending time in a place is really getting to trust the moment you begin filming, and feeling like if it doesn’t work, it’s not because you shot it wrong, it’s because it wasn’t the right moment to film. We were also very conscious of all the media organizations that had come in before us who targeted certain kinds of images and stories—we were more invested in having a kind of collaborative relationship with the people that we’re filming.

The film never singles out or even names any characters of the collective. Why did you choose to document the collective this way?

Ben Russell: One of the things I find frustrating about documentary practice generally, but especially coming out of the United States, is that it does tend to be character driven, or the ideas are based around a kind of storytelling, which I feel is a trope of capitalism—it’s the idea that the individual is the thing that matters the most. So I’ve gravitated towards trying to make works that think about what a collective body is. It just felt like if you’re going to make a film about an anarchist collective that has a horizontal power structure, it doesn’t make sense to focus on individuals.

Wouldn’t focusing on characters and having them speak make audiences more sympathetic to their causes?

Ben Russell: I made a film in 2013 with Ben Rivers called A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, and part of that film involved reenacting a commune, and we found, to our surprise, that the individuals were readily singled out for critique from people who are suspicious of ideas of collective organization—they were referred to as hippies or annoying, which may or may not have been true, but it wasn’t something that we wanted. I was especially cagey about putting anybody from this group into that situation of being dismissed based on the way that they speak or the way that they dress, as opposed to what they’re doing, which felt like the more important aspect of being.

How did you make the most of moments you had access to?

Guillaume Callieau:  We asked consent and explained what we were shooting each time. Each time we shot a scene we would show the frame and explain, you can be inside or outside, and asked if everybody was happy with that.

Ben Russell: Also every time we would film, when we came back the next time, we would show everything that we had filmed previously. I think they really appreciated that—there was a transparency and a real willingness on our part to engage and be visible. My education was in post-colonial cinema, and part of it is that you can’t be more important than your subject, and you can’t name people instead of letting them name themselves. You have to place yourself in a position where what you’re doing is never more meaningful than the thing that’s actually happening in front of you.

The climax is a protest of a reservoir development that includes a confrontation with the police—how did you approach filming these events?

Guillaume Callieau: For a long time, we thought we’d never leave the geographic space of the ZAD. But at some point, we decided that what the ZAD was was not this geographical place, but it was more what people do, who they are, and how they act with the world. So they were going to this demonstration and they proposed us to. We decided we want to join, because at this point, we’re starting to understand more what the struggle was about. We get more aligned with this idea of going to film, but mostly as demonstrant—as one of the participants.

Ben Russell: We had been participating in this community for so long that it just seemed like we needed to show a bit more solidarity. And we figured that as long as we were going, we might as well try and film, and we should film the way that we had filmed previously—long, static takes—which seemed like a terrible idea, but it was something that we committed to. So we knew the architecture of the event without knowing the specifics of what the state’s response would be; a lot of it was just luck and timing.

How did members of the collective respond to the project?

Ben Russell: Folks were quite complimentary, specifically around the fact that of all the people who had been there to make things, we were the only group of filmmakers who returned so many times. It really changed the rapport, and it feels like an important opening—how one represents a community or a space is by trying to spend as much time with them as you can.

Guillaume Cailleau: I really enjoyed that [our time] was not only long, but long with interruptions—we always had time in between to reflect on the place. And it was long enough for our subjects to be really surprised every time we would come back.

What do you hope people will take away from the film?

Ben Russell: There’s hope inscribed in the subject that these guys were victorious, and they continue to be successful. And the model that we present in this film is one that seems replicable. It feels like people who watch this movie have also been really inspired to join the cause—one doesn’t imagine one’s avant-garde cinema is going to produce action.

Direct Action was presented at the 62nd New York Film Festival, in the Currents section which complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices.