Olivier Babinet

Olivier Babinet was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1971. He left school when he was 17 years old and moved to Paris. His first feature film “Robert Mitchum is dead”, was screened at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival at the Acid. The film won the Grand Prix at the Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers and was nominated as best first film at the Raindance London Festival. In parallel to his activities as a screenwriter and director, Olivier Babinet worked for two years with school children in Aulnay-sous-Bois. In a neighborhood where 50% of families live below the poverty line. This collaboration resulted in the production of 8 short fantasy and science fiction films by these teenagers. As the meetings progressed, the idea of making a documentary film about them was born. Four years in all, spent in immersion with them. SWAGGER was presented at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Acid selection. At the time of its release, it received a unanimous welcome from the critics. Then the film was selected for the Césars (the French Oscars) and the Lumière prize. It won the Nigel Moore Award at the Vancouver Film Festival, the Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the Construir Cine Festival in Buenos Aires, and a special mention at the “Festival dei Popoli” in Florence. In its first week online on MUBÏ USA, the film was listed among the 1000 best films of all time. Olivier Babinet is a member of the American artist collective "We are Familia" and has directed numerous music videos. His latest feature film, SEXFISH won the Jury Prize at the Bordeaux Independent Film Festival. And India Hair, its main performer, was nominated for Revelation 2021 at the Césars. NORMAL is his new feature film.

“What exact era is NORMAL set in? What adolescence is this? On one hand, I wanted to draw on my own memories: Lucie, it's me in many ways, with the doubts, the complexes, the fantasies and the frustrations in love that we all knew at that age. On the other hand, when I work with adolescent actors, I like to compose with what they are “in the present”, in their own lives, even if it is very far from what I have known. So I was pleased to refuse to decide, and this hesitation about temporality ended up giving the film its identity: it takes place in a reality that is not quite one. We are obviously in France, but... it's a kind of France that would like to run away from itself!
[…] My production designer Toma Baqueni even pushed me to rewatch fantastic films that I really like, including Donnie Darko and especially It Follows, because they immerse a very contemporary youth in suburban imagery that goes back in time. The contrast produced takes the film towards the fable, while keeping a great credibility which is due to the actors, to their physique, to the closeness maintained with them. [...] A formula came to me straight away to define the desired tone: “a drop of Miyazaki in the Dardenne brothers”. Just as the slight anachronisms of the decor and the musical choices prevent me from dating the film too much — because a simple model of car or a word of verlan is enough to mark a context —, the fantastic deviations allow me to refuse miserabilism. When one embarks without hindsight on social realism, there is a certain aesthetic of poverty which tends to take up space. I wanted to film the environment of Lucie and her sick father, this home closed in on itself, without feeling sorry for their fate. Dreamlikeness always makes space a little more breathable. [...]”