Suzanne Lindon: “I wanted to be an actress but I didn’t dare admit it to myself”

Suzanne Lindon takes her promising first steps in cinema. Daughter of Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lindon, the young 20-year-old filmmaker has just directed “Seize Printemps”, her first feature film in which she plays the main role, that of a disillusioned teenager. A film which will be screened at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) on Wednesday, November 18.

” I had wanted to be an actress and direct a film for a long time but I didn’t dare admit it to myself because I wanted to continue my studies first. », Says Suzanne Lindon who, after having brilliantly obtained her baccalaureate, accumulated the caps of screenwriter, actress and director for her first feature film. ” By touching on my parents’ profession, I needed to feel totally legitimate and I especially did not want to have the label “daughter of”, she emphasizes. So I chose myself and I wrote this role for myself before taking over the production because I wanted to control everything, not for a question of ego, but I said to myself that if I mess up, I’ll crash alone, and if I succeed, I succeed alone ”.

In this imaginary and largely autobiographical feature film, Suzanne Lindon plays a teenage girl who is bored with people of her age and who falls in love with a man much older than her. ” It’s inspired by what I felt at the same time because what I was going through was less exciting than what I was fantasizing about », Explains the young filmmaker who wrote her screenplay in a month when she was only 15 years old. ” It was as if I was writing the diary of a young girl that I was making up, she says. I only wrote when I wanted to and even if it was only a word or two a day it was okay, I did not impose any constraints on myself “.

A touching scenario of about fifty pages in which silences supplant dialogues. ” I like the unspoken and the things that we must guess, that’s why I preferred to bet on the acting because the strongest emotions are those that we live and that we feel and not the ones we’re talking about, explains Suzanne Lindon. As much with the word we can say everything and its opposite whereas the body, him, never lies ».

Long kept secret, Suzanne Lindon’s first feature film was shot in just under three weeks with little money and without the help of her parents. ” I boycotted them at all levels, jokes the young director. They were not allowed to read the script and even less to be present on the set or to attend the editing ”, specifies Suzanne Lindon who even preferred to move out of the family home several months before the start of filming. ” I wanted to emancipate myself because I didn’t want to have dinner with them and tell them about my day. It was really important for me to make this movie alone “.

Seeming to already convince the critics, his first feature film was also selected at the Cannes Film Festival, which ultimately did not take place because of the health crisis. ” When Thierry Frémaux (general manager of the Cannes Film Festival, editor’s note) called me, I thought it was a hoax, smiles Suzanne Lindon. It’s a time in my life that I will never forget “.

Proud of this first achievement, the young filmmaker now hopes to be able to play roles for different directors or even write scripts for others. ” I will have to continue to prove myself and it will be done gradually because we must especially not want to go faster than the music “.