Julie Delpy Shares Her New Film 'Meet The Barbarians'

[Music] well welcome Julie to our deadline Tiff studio um for those people that haven't familiarize themselves with Meet The Barbarians can you describe it a little bit well I would say it's a comedy on a very um painful subject matter which is uh the refugee crisis I um decided to make a comedy obviously not about the refugees are not making being made fun of obviously but I'm just uh kind of having a fun time with just analyzing French people in French society and their level of I would say racism hate you know all that stuff but in a very funny way because I kind of make fun I I make fun of kind of a big part of the French society and even people that are overly you know empathetic as well you know my character I play someone who wants to save the world and you know so I kind of explore this uh topic you know I enjoy this film so much because as you say sometimes well comedy can be a great way to sugarcoat some some very serious topics and um like I love the character the plumber character um who I am so Breton and he's not even Breton well it's the absurdity that's the comedy is you know really about the absurdity of what being hateful is you know to foreigners that are completely harmless and you know they just want to be you know and they also have we see also their point of view on the French it's like who the hell are those people you know what are they doing to us like you know so there's a lot of humor to it but there's also drama in it you know and uh I think there's moments in the film that are moving as well but I really had fun with the character of the the because he was uh he's just so extreme in his in his views but really realistic if you know what's going on in France and in part of Europe right now or the world should I say unfortunately it was all too realistic um and the comedy honestly I did laugh out loud when I don't want to spoil the film but there's a scene where a woman gets revenge on a man uh using uh food uh the sausage beating oh yeah yeah yeah yeah um and I just laughed out loud because the absurdity is a great foil to the seriousness and you really use that yeah and I try to make a film that never goes too far into the drama and it goes far into the comedy but you know I was very careful like the dramatic part I go into it but for example I don't show what the people are seeing of the do of the the film that she that the uh so I try to to keep it you know it's always on the razor's Edge you say yeah on the field it's the same in French because I feel like it's very important to find it's it's a lot of fine tuning and we did a lot of work in the editing room with my editor KY we we really worked many many many days on just finding the right tone for this can you describe um your approach to directing in general what kind of a director would you say you are and and specifically with directing yourself when you're acting and directing at the same time well it's sometimes hard and I would you know I have many projects where I'm not going to be acting and I'm looking forward to those because I really want to get out of acting and or do it but not in my own films even though I have also a project where I'm also acting and I mean depending but I I'd love to direct movies with me not being involved as an actor and and as an actor but not involved as a director writer but how I work I would say I really believe uh making a film is a is teamwork I'm very into the team I know France there's the big thing about the O and all that but I think that's what I learned in living in the US is that having a real teamwork together and uh and I always love when there's input from you know the decoror from the set designer from you know from the actors because sometimes actors have the best ideas about their character like what they should wear or things like that so I love working as a team and I would say I'm very fun to work with I think because actors love that they love to be part of it they love to create together together they love to I mean usually the writing is very precise but when it comes to the looks to the the acting sometimes I I let actors try something different in a scene I say okay forget everything I said and let's do it you know let's just do something different you know and same with the DP sometimes you know I have something very planned it's very planned but then I love to just throw away the planning completely just for one take or two takes or something and you always get especially in comedy you always get great stuff when you do that because it's like suddenly people it's unsettling but at the same time it's exciting and people they wake up you know it's like there's nothing more boring than doing exactly the same thing every time you know like people wanting you to repeat everything I just let people be a little bit I just think as an actor I learned that it's very freeing ultimately I found this film to be quite feminist in flavor you know the the women control the narrative in the end because they they have this kind of Uprising and and then you realize that they were sort of in control the whole time in a way yeah and they wake up at times yeah yeah I realized that after finishing the film it was like you know I was raised by parents my mom and father were quite feminist and um and it happened by itself sort of but it it was true that the film is based on many many interviews of refugees of NOS that received refugees on um Villages that receive refugees and and we did tremendous amount of of work almost like journalists to find out about how things were happening and what we realize is that women were very often not always but the trend was towards women adapting faster wanting to welcome refugees more than men uh less threatened by new people coming in somehow more adaptable I'm not saying it's a generality they were great men as well well or you know but we felt women were really the the moving pieces of this um humanitarian thing about receiving people and often within the refugees women were more able to adapt faster not that men didn't adapt they did but it was a little harder to let go of being a surgeon and suddenly being a you know a driver their position was you know less than what in their country was it was in their country so they felt a little more uncons with that and I'm describing the film is set in the very beginning of their settling so you know but then you see that the men eventually adapted to but I love the idea that women you know move you know the surviving Instinct and I hate the word instinct to describe women but there is something in women that is about okay you know if I need to work and pick up arted chokes for a living I will do it you know even though I'm a graphic designer you know so I we found that in the interviews a lot so that's why we did it that way in a way I feel like ultimately the film ends with a message of Hope um your character is working in a refugee camp and that was really what she wanted she wanted to find a way to genuinely help and as you say she's sort of almost a caricature of someone who is sort of crying at the sadness of other people people's pain yeah but ultimately it's it's hopeful because everybody does find in their place well they find their trvo they find their calling you know and I think a friend even tell her at one point is like if you were really wanting to help people you wouldn't be here you know helping a couple of people you would be somewhere else because there's so at the same time it's I think the ending is is hopeful but at the same sad because you see this refugee camp that is 880,000 people it's a real Refugee I mean obviously where where was that we shot at the border of um it's in um in Jordan but at the border of Syria you can see the border at the end of the shot it's really intense to see you know people in the St status of refugee because they they're not Jord you know they don't have the a Jordan passport they're they're Syrian but they can't they can be in their country the status of refugee is is a pretty much a very a very difficult thing especially in a refugee camp they're locked in they can't get out they're all some of them are allowed to work outside but they're basically in inside that final shot is incredibly poignant when you slowly pan out and it's just this huge endless sprawl I mean it's it's giant you know I know we drove for hours throughout the the camp it's it's a it's a special experience we shot it before we shot the film and uh it was intense yeah my last question for you what do you have planned next I I have a few films that I'm um I've I've written many things I have films I've never been able to make but you know now things are um I don't know I feel like it's a good time for certain kind of stories and stuff and I'm having good kind of open doors at this point so I'm exploring right now but I'm probably going to make a film I'm not going to wait 10 years to make a film I'm going to make a film next year that's for sure great that's wonderful well congratulations I really enjoyed this film oh really thank you thank you and have a wonderful Festival thank you [Music]