Of Swiss and French nationalities, Ursula Meier studied filmmaking in Belgium. In 2008, her first feature film, “Home,” was selected for the Cannes Critics Week and received numerous awards and nominations worldwide, including three French César nominations. In 2012, “L’Enfant d’en haut” (“Sister”) received a Silver Bear-Special Prize at the Berlin Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards’ Best Foreign Film. Like “Home,” the film was awarded three Quartz at the Swiss Film Awards, including Best Feature Film, and represented Switzerland again at the Oscars. In 2014, she took part in the collective film “Les ponts de Sarajevo” (“Bridges of Sarajevo”), which was presented out of competition in the Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2018, she directed Berlinale’s Panorama entry “Journal de ma tête” (“Diary of My Mind”), a TV film she made as part of the “Ondes de choc” (“Shock Waves”) collection, inspired by Swiss news stories. The same year, she received the Suissimage grant for female directors for “Quiet Land,” her English-language debut project, produced by Bandita Films.
“The Line” is screening at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival, which is taking place February 10-20.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
UM: “The Line” is the story of Margaret, a young woman who must submit to a strict restraining order whilst awaiting trial for assaulting her mother. She is not allowed to approach her mother for three months, nor can she come within a hundred meters of the family home. Every day she goes to this line that separates her from her family. She is literally “locked out.”
“The Line,” which plunges into the heart of a dysfunctional family composed of four women, three sisters and a mother, is at the crossroads of my previous films, “Home,” with Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet, and “Sister,” with Léa Seydoux and Kacey Mottet Klein.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
UM: At the very beginning, myself and Stéphanie Blanchoud, the leading actress with whom I initiated the project, had the desire to stage a violent female character who fights like a man. Most of the known films or stories that have developed physically violent characters have done so through male characters.
When female characters do carry out this violence, they are mostly rebellious teenage girls. In “The Line,” a young woman of 35 loses control. Suddenly, this model of the lone cowboy is embodied through “her” rather than “him.” There was this desire to bring Margaret’s physical violence closer to that of the tortured male characters in Barbet Schroeder’s “Barfly,” Francis Ford Coppola’s [“Rumble Fish”], or Sean Penn’s “Indian Runner.”
In the beginning, I wanted the viewer to witness the opposite visual logic of what they are used to seeing in the cinema. The project then evolved, of course, but this desire carried us through the beginning of the writing process.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
UM: I would like the audience to let themselves go through the film, almost physically. For me, there is something very organic in my relationship with cinema. I would be happy if Margaret touched the viewer despite the extreme violence she can be capable of.
Over the course of the film, her body, a natural shield between her and the others, will gradually crack and reveal her flaws and wounds. A shift then takes place with the mother’s character, who, scene after scene, reveals herself to be faulty, guilty, irresponsible, self-centered — another form of violence with her daughters, a muted and buried violence.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
UM: Building a film around a simple line! There was nothing very spectacular at the beginning, unlike my film “Home,” for example, which tells the story of a family living a few meters from a highway, with each family member suffering from both sound and visual pollution. In “The Line,” it was a real challenge, both dramaturgically and cinematographically, especially since the line is at first totally immaterial because Marion, Margaret’s little sister, has not yet drawn it.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
UM: The film was funded through a co-production between three countries: Switzerland, France, and Belgium. When we developed the script with Stéphanie Blanchoud, we had some external financial support as well as from the producers. The film was financed through many different sources from the support of distributors with whom I have worked in the past like Diaphana, Filmcoopi, Memento International, and TV channels from all three countries such as ARTE, Canal+, RTS, and RTBF. We also had national grants from each country.
As the film was shot after the first lockdown during the winter 2020-21, the production situation was uncertain, especially as we did not have pandemic insurance. Nevertheless, we managed to finish the shooting with only minor damages on this side. The co-production between these three countries was very natural and I wanted to work with actors and technicians from there.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
UM: I will not have enough space to try to answer this complex question! There were, of course, several factors and encounters which, at a given moment, short-circuited and gave me a powerful desire to make films. I had my first experience in cinema around the age of 14. I had the chance to act in a film by my older sister, a student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris at that time. She is now a photographer, but she needed to go through the cinema in her artistic career at some point. I played the leading role.
The film was self-financed, so we did everything ourselves, the lighting with big theater projectors since we were shooting on reversible film, the sets, the costumes. The shooting was spread over two years during our vacations. It was a wonderful experience! I quickly realized that what I was most passionate about was not being in front of the camera but behind it. I worked during my vacations to buy my very first video camera. Between the ages of 15 and 16 years old, I directed a feature film. I could never finish it because there were too many sound problems. But no matter, I knew after that shoot that I wanted to be a filmmaker. It was a powerful desire.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
UM: Best advice: Trust your instincts.
And so, instinctually, I never follow bad advice!
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
UM: Take all the risks.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
UM: There are so many that I admire! I realized quite recently that there were only two girls in my film school in the director’s section, not to mention that the other girl was repeating the year. I realized that I had unconsciously needed to have female directors as references in my cinematographic landscape at a very young age. That’s why there were very quickly filmmakers that I admired and followed in their path. First of all, Chantal Akerman, maybe because I came to Brussels, her hometown, to study cinema. Agnès Varda, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Naomi Kawase, or Lucrecia Martel. What these directors [and their films] have in common is their immense freedom and their risk-taking.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
UM: The shooting was postponed twice because of Covid. First, we were supposed to shoot in February-March 2020. Then, the film was delayed to the beginning of winter 2020. Finally, we ended up shooting in February-March 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. At first, the sanitary measures were quite restrictive, especially in my relationship with the actors, as I like to be close to them. Then, like Margaret, I learned to keep my distance.
During the writing and preparation of the film, I realized how much it resonated with what we were experiencing with the barrier gestures and social distancing. While I was drawing on paper the imaginary territory of the film with lines representing the spaces forbidden to Margaret, I began to see these lines appear in the streets, painted on the asphalt, in public places. It was disturbing.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make it more inclusive?
UM: People from the industry are responsible for the stories we create and promote. It’s not about limiting imagination or creative freedom: it’s about telling a part of the world as it is and not as a system tries to convince us it is. I have always portrayed strong, singular women who are nevertheless hindered. Women of color are doubly victimized by the same system of forced invisibility. The struggle to change the lines is still long and it is the battle of intersectionality.
As creators of narratives, it is our responsibility to do our part, allowing future generations to project themselves and recognize themselves in heroic figures who look like them.
