We snagged a tête-à-tête with acclaimed French filmmaker Eric Toledano after his 2023 hit, A Difficult Year, made its Slovakian debut at the 2024 Visegrad Film Forum (VFF).
When French director Éric Toledano walked into the Kino Lumiere after the screening of his 2023 film, A Difficult Year (Une année difficile), the audience could not stop clapping. It was the first time that this film was shown in Slovakia as part of the Visegrad Film Forum (read our interview with program director Jakub Viktorín) which began on 13 March and will be on until 16 March 2024. A Difficult Year is the latest comedic gem from writer-directors Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano, known for their hit film “C’est la vie!” (TIFF 2017). Featuring stellar performances by Pio Marmaï, Jonathan Cohen, Noémie Merlant, and Mathieu Amalric, this puckish comedy explores the quest for purpose in a world seemingly unraveling. Bruno and Albert, played by Marmaï and Cohen, forge an unlikely friendship born out of shared struggles with addiction and debt. Their journey takes a whimsical turn when they stumble upon a group of activists fighting against overconsumption, leading to hilariously unexpected outcomes. Nakache and Toledano expertly blend satire with heartfelt moments, celebrating the resilience of the human spirit even in the face of adversity. Film Fest Report caught up with Toledano for a tête-à-tête.
“It feels good to be here, where there are so many youths watching the film, enjoying the film, and accepting it as part of their own life. I like to make tragicomedy because it is really like life, what we go through in our daily life; sad or happy, as if cinema and life are similar. Life surprises us with good moments and emotional moments, and that’s the cinema that we like,” said Toledano, who was fielded with many questions post the screening.
“This film was conceived and even shot during the pandemic with my friend of 25 years, Olivier Nakache, who was cut off from each other. We began writing our thoughts of what we felt and observations of what was happening in the pandemic,” said Toledano.
He points out that thinking of life as it were before the pandemic where life was all about overconsumption, and what Covid taught us to learn to live with minimal things, to rearrange our lives in such a fashion. “Minimalist is the trend now, and we tried to show this philosophical point of view using comedy. We know that climate change and consumerism are connected by the fact that the more you consume, the more you damage the earth, so it was interesting to make an unlikely meeting of ideological points of view. You lose empathy, you don’t have love and affection in life. We are in a very difficult situation; we have stopped caring and we are too separate hence we tried to show this in our film.”
The film also is a way to show young people who can have a way of taking action which through comedy we show activism via cinema as a way of raising awareness. The director tries to show their struggle out of anonymity through the characters. “Environment activists of the Extinction Rebellion type that we followed to understand what they were doing and used some of their ideas in the film. This generation is telling us something, they have a software that is very different from the one we had at their age. And we sincerely hope that their awareness regarding environmental issues will make things change. While working on the film, we talked, collaborated, and debated with this youth.”
Film Fest Report is a proud media partner of the Visegrad Film Forum 2024.
