MARIE AMACHOUKELI’S

She was born in France in 1979. In 2008 she co-directed the short film FORBACH with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis. The film won the Clermont-Ferrand 2009 - Grand Prix. In 2009 she co-directed with Claire Burger C’EST GRATUIT POUR LES FILLES, winner of the César for Best Short Film. The following year he signed, once again with Claire Burger, the short DEMOLITION PARTY. In 2014 with Claire and Samuel Theis Marie directed PARTY GIRL, winner of Camera d’Or Award at Cannes. Her most recent short, an animated film directed with Vladimir Movounia-Kouka, is I WANT PLUTO TO BE A PLANET AGAIN (2016). ÀMA GLORIA, her first feature, was the opening film at the Semaine de la Critique at Cannes 2023.

“The film is dedicated to Laurinda Correia, the woman who took care of me when I was little. She worked as a caretaker in the apartment building where I lived. She was a Portuguese immigrant, and I spent most of my childhood in her lodge with her children. When I was six, she told me that she was going back to her homeland with her husband to open a business and start a new life near her family. It was the first major shock in my life. Today, we are still in touch, we send  each other postcards, she calls me on my birthday, and when I visit her in Portugal, there are pictures of me among those of her children and grandchildren. She still calls me “my daughter”. With this film, I wanted to talk about the people who take care of children for a living, and about how the emotional bond sometimes exceeds the predefined limits of their work. In our society, where motherhood is sanctified, I think that it is taboo to say that not only parents can be bursting with love for their children, or that, conversely, a child can feel that absolute love for a person who is not a parent. You don’t even tell your own family. It is a secret, almost clandestine, unspoken kind of love. And it is precisely because it is secret that I wanted to talk about it.”