In Conversation with Director of ‘La Mif’ Fred Baillif (Part 1)

Roar writer George Jackson talks to Fred Baillif, a Swiss social worker turned film director, about his new feature film, “La Mif”, a challenging improvisational drama about young women living in care and the adults who support them. In this first half of the interview, we learn about the inspiration and background of the film.

R: Mr Baillif, I saw you at the press screening here at BFI Southbank on Saturday. Could we start with what exactly inspired you to start this particular project in the first place?

FB: Well, it’s the people that I met. In the beginning I wanted to talk about sex abuse, but then after #MeToo happened I wanted to be careful with this, as it’s a sensitive issue. And I thought maybe it would be part of the film, but I wanted to find the right place to talk about it. I had the idea of going to a home and since I worked at this particular home more than 20 years ago, Claudia Grob (who plays the role of Lora) opened the doors to me and once I met the kids and the social workers, I was inspired to create the story. I’d already done some interviews and research, but meeting them helped me find the story, especially with Claudia, because her strong experience in social work as director and manager of the place meant she had a lot to say. She really inspired me, especially with stories around the taboo of sexuality and the reputation of the institutions, who are very careful with this. I started to wonder if there might be a link between this and the abuse.

R: I recall at the Q&A Claudia referred to all of this as the “mad system”. The film demonstrates the conflict between being a professional as a social worker and then having a relationship with these vulnerable people. How do you feel about this “mad system”? 

FB: The question for me is what are the needs of those kids? Of course, protection is important, but the “mad system”, something we see in the film; protection takes away everything else. I mean, it’s the priority. We protect. And then we don’t prioritise other things. I’ve always asked myself, what are the needs of these kids who are put away? We put them in the ghetto, you know, we tell them they are different by doing that. And they understand they’re different. So what do we do with them? I realised while doing my research, but also for me as a social worker, that protection takes all the space. What space do we have for creativity? This is what I do today. I’m still a social worker doing what I do, because I’m free, I do what I want to do, and I take risks by doing this. But there is creativity and this creativity will, I hope, inspire those girls to believe in themselves and to grow because that’s what the priority should be if you are a social worker. I was really affected by my first experience after I graduated. I worked in a juvenile prison and I was just a nice cop. This is not what you want when you study social work. What you dream of is to really bring something to others, not to lock them in a cell. And that was my job. I was literally locking kids into a cell. So doing this film is the result of that experience. 

R: You’ve said in the past that what you’re doing now, in telling these stories, is a form of social work in itself. Do you suppose that the idea of a rigid system that doesn’t always value the humanity in people can be remedied through the storytelling, which helps to explore that side of things in more depth? 

FB: Yeah, maybe it will help. I hope it will help people think about social work because I don’t think people really know what’s happening. That’s a behind the scenes thing, you know? And that’s what people want when they watch movies. They want to know what’s happening behind the scenes. And in the film you are really there. I mean, I could feel it even when I watched it again the other night. I can feel you are really inside this home. This is also why we choose to shoot it that way. No landscape, nothing. It’s just inside all the time, because I wanted it to be claustrophobic in a way. Yeah. And I hope it helps people understand what it is like to be there, not only for the kids, but also for the social workers. And the manager, obviously, who is kind of locked there too. But I hope it will at least give people that message. That we should put creativity as a priority. Not only protection. 

R: It’s a really good point. One thing that was quite interesting, and you mentioned this the other night, is the complex structure of the film. You talk about the intensity of everything that’s going on and how it affects not just the kids, but also the people that are working there and how it affects them psychologically. There are all these layers of stress, and then when we find out what happens at the end, it inevitably falls into place, but the accumulation of stresses seems painful for the characters and explains some of their later behaviours. When you were editing, was that use of structure something you had in mind already?

FB: Well, I wrote the script that way because I liked the idea of having chapters and it comes from my documentary filmmaker background. I was doing portraits of people and I divided the films into chapters, especially my first one. And so when you do fiction, it’s difficult because most of the time if you read all kinds of books about storytelling they always say it has to be one character who does this and that. And I don’t want to do that. I wanted to have many characters. So how do you structure that? I thought maybe it’s better to do it that way. And then slowly delivering pieces of information. So it helped. And then when I first edited the film, I did it as a linear story, because I didn’t have the nerves, or the balls. I was a bit scared, you know? And really, I’m sorry for people who suffered from the pandemic, but for me it was a lucky thing because it gave me the space to do it. I told my wife, look, I’m going to start from scratch because we had a screening a few days before the lockdown, I showed the movie to friends, producers and so on. They gave me feedback; they liked it. So I started from scratch and really enjoyed it. It was hard. Very tough. But doing the editing myself is great because I can literally wake up in the middle of the night when I have an idea. And I can do it. You can’t do that when you hire people.

R: It must be frustrating when you do have that to worry about. Whereas I suppose when you do have that level of freedom, there’s a lot more room for spontaneity?

FB: Yeah, and I really enjoy editing. I get to create, especially because of the improvisation technique. There’s so much possibility and you can do everything. I did search for someone, but it takes more time. I didn’t have the budget to pay someone to edit my film for six months. So there are many reasons why I did it that way.

R: Do you reckon you’ll take a similar approach to future projects in terms of you doing editing as well?

FB: Definitely, but I’d like to have an editor with me sometimes, just to have some distance from what I’m doing. Someone who can suggest things and someone who knows the footage very well and who can help me, but I’m determined to do most of the editing myself.

R: Would you say this level of control helps you realise the original vision for a project more precisely?

FB: Yeah, when you grow…you see, I’m growing now, I’m getting old. But the experience showed me that you have to accept who you are and the skills that you have. And my best skill is to be intuitive. I’m not going to have a strict découpage, I don’t work that way. When I was younger, I was always felt that I was not good enough because I don’t do a strict découpage, and I have to do this shot and make sure about this detail, and so on. I love being on the set with my DOP and being able to say we should do this or maybe that, and there we have good ideas because we are in the moment. So it’s a different way to work without dialogues written, and it’s difficult to finance. But I really want to keep working that way because that’s what I’m good at. And now I’ve finally accepted it. 

R: And before you were making a lot of documentaries.

FB: Yes, and this rigidity is how you work when you do a documentary.

R: So do you feel this intuition is freer with fiction? Because you’re not following the formula you’d normally have with a documentary, do you feel you can express this better?

FB: Definitely. Yeah, but also I think there was a turning point when I was doing a documentary series for Swiss television. The producer was asking me to have this and that. But I’m not going to tell the protagonist to do this and that. I can’t. It has to be realistic. And then there, I made my first feature, “Tapis Rouge”, with no budget because I wanted to try this and I realised there, in a fictional setting, I can do whatever I want. I can manipulate them, if they’re okay with it. But not in a documentary, so this is really where I made this change. 

R: So in feature films there’s more control over the subject, whereas when you’re working on a documentary there are limitations?

FB: Yeah. And there is an ethic because you can’t tell people what to do. This is why we have reality TV now because people want to manipulate them and they’re out there doing it now with them; but in documentaries there is an ethic to have, and it’s not moral, I think, to cheat.

“La Mif” will be in cinemas across the UK from 25th February.

The second part of this article will be published tomorrow.