Alice Winocour

The award winner in 2022 was the French director and screenwriter Alice Winocour. With 'Proxima' and 'Paris Memories', the two most recent films from her oeuvre could be experienced at the IFFMH. And not only that: in a round of talks open to all interested parties, our Masterclass, she allowed us insights into her work and helped us to interpret her cinematographic visions.

ALICE WINOCOUR

She looks at women as only women can; she considers an astronaut’s reality as a mother and the trauma caused by an assassination attempt with analytical clarity and boundless empathy; she works with some of the most impressive actors of her generation, from Virginie Efira and Eva Green to Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger, Matt Dillon, Lars Eidinger, Benoît Magimel, and Matthias Schoenaerts. In 2016, she received an Oscar nomination for ›Mustang‹, which she co-wrote. With just four feature films, Alice Winocour has established herself as one of Europe’s most exciting directors.

Her work is distinguished by the intimate insight it affords into her characters’ psyches and the fragility of the human experience. She ceaselessly probes questions of sincerity and truth, approaching her stories through their details: “I wanted to capture the struggle of these women with an entomologist’s eye,” is how Winocour described her approach in ›Augustine‹ (2012), her debut feature about a paralyzed maid at the mercy of the doctors at a hospital. It’s an approach that has remained constant in all her work until today. In the thriller ›The Bodyguard‹ (2015), she reveals the impossibility of a soldier reintegrating into society after the war.
 
With ›Proxima‹ (2019), she created a wholly atypical space drama: Astronaut Sarah (Eva Green) has her greatest wish come true when she is selected for a space mission. But the preparation turns out to be more and more challenging. The tough physical training is nothing compared to the psychological strain – because Sarah is a mother and she must leave her daughter Stella behind on Earth for a year.

Winocour’s latest film ›Paris Memories‹ (2022), which celebrates its German premiere at IFFMH, seamlessly links to her previous work, raising the question of how traumatic experiences can be remembered and processed.