International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

The splendid landscape of the Pays de Caux that opens the film—its shades of green darkened by the light—echoes with the barking of dogs. A hunting day? A woman, white-haired and dressed in black, emerges from the woods through the branches. It’s Sophie Roger, or rather the alter ego she becomes when she steps into the frame. Since The Gardeners of Petit Paris (FID 2010), her dense, concise, and wayward films have carved out a path between cinema and the visual arts. Of these works, Love on the Bramble Path is both the most despairing and the most humorous, joyful. Despairing, because it highlights the features and emotions of solitude in a world emptied of people, deserted. Filming flowers in her garden, the solitary woman speaks to herself, as if needing to be coaxed to carry on: “Celery in bloom”… “There,” when the camera finds its focus. Funny, joyful, because one is never truly alone when holding a camera: one can play with one’s other self, with the beings and things that enter the frame along with it. In the château park, when the white-haired Irma Vep calls out “Béatrice?”, no one answers, but the gaze of a deer draws her into a comic pantomime around a tree. Further along the path, a scarecrow becomes the model and support for a graceful self-crucifixion. Back home, in the warmth, the filmmaker becomes a visual artist. With sheets of paper, dried flowers, others superimposed, pages torn from a dictionary of love’s states, she composes layers and transparencies. A song describes a world without sun: “Kiss me! Later will be too late!” Kiss whom? The gulls circling in the sky? Suddenly, a chocolate labrador leaps into the frame in slow motion. What follows is a stunning remake of the ending of Ordet (Dreyer’s film). The falling snow won’t serve as a shroud for the naked, cadaverously rigid body lying in the garden. Brought back to life by Lola the dog, the white-haired woman rises and walks. Who would have believed it? At the end of the bramble path, it’s paradise. Paws and hands layered on the page, the two friends read Virginia Woolf’s account of the death of the moth. No doubt they are thinking of the butterfly killed by a spider in the abandoned shed. At night, through the window, one might glimpse a woman and a dog dancing together in the house. In a state of rapture—like us, at the end of Sophie Roger’s film.

Cyril Neyrat

Interview

Sophie Roger

L’Amour sur le chemin des roncettes is a film shot with great freedom, solo, inviting an intimate journey. What was the project?

Maybe in an even more assured way than in my previous films, there is no “project” originally. Simply the necessity to shape an intimate crossing, close to the writing of a love letter. I did not have a camera anymore and I had to make do with the footage I had archived for many years. There are several shooting formats, several cameras and eras but one unit of place. This is an editing film.

From the first shots of Bénouville, the wild and sovereign nature invests the frame. What is your relation to it?

The first images are close to my house, among the bushes around an old rubbish tip. Prune, elder and willow trees. Pieces of plastic and porcelain remain among the ferns, the moss. It is the starting point of the itinerary through a friend’s garden, now deserted. “The brambles”, and its chaos cabins. In these abandoned lands, the nature resists next to the monocultures surrounding it. The end of the itinerary is situated in my garden, where every loved plant is called by its name: onager, endive, artichoke, reseda. Throughout this crossing, the plants, the trees and the animals also watch me, it’s a relation of proximity.

Correlations between love (states of love defined in the frame), nature and drawing are subtle weaved. How did you work on these motifs?

From one shot to another, one single vagrancy unites the quest, sometimes close by, things and beings, sometimes far away. I move forward like a bee gathering pollen, from the studio to the garden, through the crossing paths. I pace through this familiar place, two kilometres at most, and effectively weave a desire that is solitary, through inhabited by ghosts. From reading Roland Barthes, I draw forms of Fragments of a speech of love: “Ravissement. Episode said to be initial (but can be reproduced after the fact) during which the loving subject happens to be “ravi” (abducted and delighted) by the image of the loved object (popular name: love at first sight, scientific name: infatuation).”

You also put on a performance of yourself, often burlesquely. Is this particular work on the body of a playful nature?

Yes, the staging is playful and the self-filming is something inherently burlesque (sometimes also tragic). The absurd of some situations creates small displacements allowing me to carry on, to keep being amazed. It is a sort of “enchanted merry-go-round”, pauses to breathe a little. Love without laugh is tiring! So I pose like a roe, I listen from the hawthorn, I fix the red tractor, I danse with the scarecrow.

Your dog is a fully-fledged character in the film, along others mentioned by their name, staying off-screen.

Lola Dog, she is the character saving and offering a real counter-shot, a love muzzle. The names of the women called off screen are dispersed along the way, without answer. With Lola, it’s snow, reading, danse, these are the only shots filmed with my cellphone, footage of a present.

Interview by Olivier Pierre

Technical sheet

  • Subtitles:
    English
  • Script:
    Sophie Roger
  • Photography:
    Sophie Roger
  • Editing:
    Sophie Roger
  • Sound:
    Sophie Roger
  • Production:
    Sophie Roger
  • Contact:
    Sophie Roger

Filmography

  • Sophie Roger

    • les jardiniers du petit Paris, 2010
    • Contre-jour, service des maladies tropicales et infectieuses, 2011
    • Le point aveugle, 2012
    • l'île déserte, 2014
    • C'est donc un amoureux qui parle et qui dit:, 2015
    • Shyam Lal, un potier à Molela-Rajasthan, 2015
    • Dans l'atelier de Loreto Corvalan, 2016
    • Dialogue de l'arbre-carte postale à Pierre Creton, 2016
    • Les vagues, 2017
    • Un son sur cette dernière image, 2021