For the Cannes Film Festival 2013 edition, Arte France‘s editor in chief Virginie Apiou, traveled to the Croisette to interview vedettes exclusively for the Kitsuné Journal, and hold a gleeful gazette!

She met Roberto Minervini, who’s presenting his new documentary titled “Stop The Pounding Heart“.

Italian-born, U.S. resident photographer, mostly filmmaker and also music producer, obviously, Roberto Minervini has more than one feather in his cap.

He told her more about his film, a portrayal of nowadays Texan youth, and more particularly of Sara’s life, a young fundamentalist Christian, and Colby, a bull rider amateur, and their adolescent attraction. Undoubtedly one of the most accomplished movie of the festival.

Watch the trailer of Stop The Pounding Heart and read Roberto Minervini‘s interview below.

Do you know Kitsuné ?

Yes. First time I heard about it, I think it was a while years ago in Japan. I was traveling, I was in music industry with a friend of mine, who’s actually supervising music on my films.

“Stop The Pounding Heart“ is the third film you have shot in Texas. Why ?

My exploration of Texas as a microcosme represents America today with a lot of contradictions, as religious fundamentalism, guns, culture…

One of your protagonist has a « Texas boy » written tattoo. What is exactly a “Texas boy” ?

A Texas boy is a boy who has a very hard skin because that’s how a man has to be in Texas. So, in a way, a Texas boy it’s a confident yet scared at the same time boy. And perhaps that’s what’s makes Texas boy similar to the other boys everywhere: being frightened while looking confident.

Your movies are always about a young generation, here it’s a portrayal of two adolescents: Sara and Colby. Why?

What interested me about young people is their emotional immaturity, their vulnerability, which embraces a possible manipulation. My young protagonists are potentially young adults, they’re adolescents. They’re motivated by life and death reasons, love and hate reasons… It’s a survival instinct which makes them move in several directions.

 

What means this title “Stop The Pounding Heart” ?

The title comes from a sentence, something that the mother tells to Sara, the young protagonist. When she prays God, it’s to control her feelings. But for me, obvioulsy, “The Pounding Heart” is the heart which beats fast because of love and fear, which are almost the same two flips of the same coin. For me, “Stop The Pounding Heart” is an illusion, illusion given by religion, to be able to control adolescents emotions.

Your protagonists, Sarah and Colby, two teenagers, want to have fun. What is the definition of fun, for them ?

It’s hard to say. How to have fun ? How being yourself ? It’s having fun without getting hurt.

If I ask you to define me in one sentence what’s about your movie “Stop The Pounding Heart“ ?

It has to have something to do with how to be good and be yourself at the same time. Something like that.

 

Why do you choose to work only with real people who play their own characters, their own lives ?

I don’t write my stories and then look for people to interpret them directly. I feel that my work and my mission is more about report what people live. At this stage of my career and life, I’m not particularly interested in something completely fictitious, written on paper, which needs to cast actors to interpret it. I’d like to represent what I see in reality.

How old are you ?

I’m forty two.

 

How to define your style of movies? It’s not completely a documentary, neither fiction, so ?

I don’t know. I represent what I see. The territory which I plan to see in my films is between reality and fictitious art form.

 

Young bodies are very important in your shooting way, why ?

My opinion is that there’s something very tactile in my film. I think their soul and their inner person, transpire through the body.

This peerless way to shoot seems to be like a choregraphy, like a musical way to film. Are you interested by directing video clips?

I did it, an electronic music duo from Germany called Funk Störung, was interested by my way to shoot, so they rebuild an electronic video based on the footage that I had. Since then, I had opportunities of doing which I’d definitely accept but I made it clear that I’d treat music videos as a film, as shorts stories. I would do it as mini films, not just a support for the music. The single which I made the video named “Disconnected”.

What are you currently working on ?

I have two projects actually. One with a fisherman and maybe another one with Mexican emigrants in America. It’s about teenagers, and physicality again.

What represents Cannes for you ?

Cannes is very important. It will be a great test for me to see how people respond to my work. For me, this is the biggest achievement.

Interview made by Virginie Apiou.

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