Quotes

[press conference for Wild Diamond (2024) at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival] It started from the fact that I've always watched reality TV. I was flabbergasted by these new stories and this new mythology which you can see broadcast on the television, the internet and on social networks. It promotes very reactionary ideas, such as class violence, hypersexualisation of women in the name of entertainment, the feeding of a culture of sexual violence. I was flabbergasted by the violence which was displayed so openly to all. People think, OK, it's not dangerous, it's just a form of entertainment, but it's not true. So I felt a mixture of being flabbergasted and also a need to talk about this violence. I was fascinated by the candidates who are quite powerful and who have something to say for themselves. I really wondered therefore how they were as women, because they display women in a different way. So I had all these questions in mind. I wondered, is this proof that they still live in a male-dominated society which feels that women are only women if they're really sexy and desirable? Or on the contrary, have they espoused all these codes but with the with the idea of freeing themselves of the shackles? They have this weapon, their beauty, which enables them to impose themselves on the world. So it was a mixed bag of all sorts of different questions that I wanted to explore through Rough Diamond. Ever since I studied fine arts, I was interested in the idea of beauty, the representation of beauty, the power that's linked to beauty. This is something that interested me long before I did Rough Diamond.

[Cannes press conference for Wild Diamond (2024)] It was extremely important for me to ensure that Liane would be a non-professional actress, simply to be consistent. Liane is invisible, she wants to become famous, so I really wanted to have an actress who wasn't well-known. There was a question of a geographical and political consistency as well - I needed to choose an actress who came from the south. Julie Allione did the casting and she spent months and months trying to find Malou [Malou Khebizi], her friends and her little sister.