Noémie Merlant

Actress and director she starred in film such as PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019) by Celine Sciamma, JUMBO (2020) by Zoé Wittock, PARIS, 13th DISTRICT (2021) by Jacques Audiard, A YEAR, A NIGHT (2021) by Isaki Lacuesta.
She directed the short films JE SUIS UNE BICHE (2017) and SHAKIRA (2019). MI IUBITA, MON AMOUR (2021) is her first feature film.

Director’s statement

“After making my short film SHAKIRA, I saw myself as being more legitimate as a filmmaker and also felt the need to express myself. Sanda, Alexia and Clara, who play in MI IUBITA are my friends in real life. They are actresses, and we support each other’s personal projects. They were with me when I shot SHAKIRA. Gimi [Covaci], the girls and I are a close-knit group of friends, we speak a great deal about cinema and the idea of making a movie together came to us naturally.
Gimi suggested that we spend the summer in Romania, where he comes from, and while organizing the trip, we thought: “Why don’t we make a film there together?” I loved how spontaneous the idea was, but I hadn’t a story in mind. A little while later, Gimi said to me: “Why don’t we start with our friendships in the group and then speak about our love story?” And then we spontaneously started working, fueled by this sort of creative surge. It was too late to put together a real crew and production team, but I had the feeling that it would be now or never. This impromptu way of doing things corresponded perfectly with our budding narrative: a story of freedom, immediacy, impulsion. I was also more comfortable shooting my first feature film without the pressure of having a big budget at stake, which would have paralyzed me. I needed to be free, without being too readily influenced, in order to keep our story as close as possible to what we wanted to say. So, we just pieced together our own small crew and we all left by car. Eleven people and fourteen days of shooting later, MI IUBITA MON AMOUR was born.”