Anaïs Volpé is a screenwriter, filmmaker, visual artist, and actress. She likes mixing arts and exploring new forms of narration. In 2013, she directed her first short film, “Blast.” The film won the Jury’s Prize in the International Festival of Young Talents France/China.

“HEIS (Chronicles)” premiered at the 2016 LA Film Festival on June 5.

W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.

AV: “HEIS (chronicles)” is the story of Pìa, a 25-year-old woman who has to move back to her family after struggling with life issues. Her main goal is to come back for a better start. Sam, her twin brother, still lives at their mom’s house and he doesn’t handle his life the same way her sister does, and he rejects her lifestyle. Who is right and who is wrong? The duty to stay or the right to go? Between love and anger, emancipation and guilt, this film is family tale.

This is a film about two languages, and kind of dedicated to two generations: youth and parents. It “chronicles” one family’s summer in Paris.

Through hope and struggle, I tried to film the pulse of the youth and also the pulse of the generation above. Two parallels and different generations — a split but an unconditional love between them.

W&H: What drew you to this story?

AV: The personal context of this movie was that I left my family at 17 years old to live alone in Paris. My family is based in south of France.

I was trying to become an artist while doing many odd jobs. I had this feeling that I was, kind of like my friends, a victim of the “under 25s” crisis in France. The contrast was that we were very motivated to succeed in our lives, but we felt very locked in our society all the time. Years after, I can feel the same contrast between distress and ambition in a lot of young people here in Europe.

Maybe we are locked in something between sadness and a powerful hope. I thought that this feeling was kind of weird, true, and interesting to analyze.

When I hear my parents talking about their own youth, I feel very nostalgic of a time I would never experience. Their youth seemed to be so pure and joyful, without the stress or pressure of not starting their lives in a good way. I had a little this feeling of innocence while I traveled alone in Beijing. I saw that the issues facing youth there were kind of opposite to ours. When I was in China, I was quite sad thinking about the youth in France.

So, when I got back to Paris a few weeks after, I decided to make a movie about the youth, made by the youth — a face to face with current issues. And then “HEIS (chronicles)” was born.

This film has been made with an independent spirit. I really wanted to do it in an independent way — self-produced — in order to stay true to the content of the film. I struggled to make this film as hard as the youth has to make a living here in Paris. I thought that it was more honest and more personal to do it this way.

W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?

AV: I would like that the audience totally understand that there was no budget on the movie and that “HEIS (chronicles)” is emergency cinema. I chose to do a film very talkative and introspective with a huge abundance of images in order to be in tune with the period we are currently living through the screens of our society. The voice over is there to accentuate the introspection and the need to talk — the emergency to express things.

It’s a reflection of what happens in the head of a young person who has to face many choices, and how it is heavy to live with all these troubles at the same time — job, family, love, dreams, guilt, friends. The movie is about the turn of a young person who has to make important decisions for her life: Does she have to listen herself? Does she have to listen to her family’s advice? Does she have to forget her dreams or does she have to forget her family?

To be honest, I don’t really know what I want as an audience reaction. Because these questions in the project are so universal and personal that people will always react kind of differently.

For example, you may have someone in the audience who will exactly live this or that in his own life and it could either be a welcome release or a bad over-questioning for him. And also you can have someone in the audience that won’t be open to these questions and will refuse to [engage with them.]

There is no clear outcome in the film because these questions that I deal with have no answers — I think that all our life we can ask ourselves these kind of existential questions. What I can say is that I would like the audience to feel itself understood. And that the spectators can think, “I’m not alone in this shit.”

W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

AV: The biggest challenge in making the film was to do it without [much] money or funding. But it was my goal to do it, no matter what happened. It was an emergency for me to do it — it felt very instinctive.

W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.

AV: In pre-production, I received a grant from the French Cultural Institute of China when I was in Beijing in the end of 2013. I had a camera with me, so I started to write the script and shoot directly over there with this money. I shot every day very instinctively.

Then, when I was back in France, the script was written and I decided to do it in self-production, so I asked some good friends to lend me cameras and microphones. Thereafter my friend Elie Mittelmann, who is a professional sound recorder, came to record the sound a few days with his own equipment.

Meanwhile, I was working in call-centers and also in a hotel in Paris in the breakfast services very early — my job-day was finished at noon so I could start to shoot the movie with the help of Alexandre Desane, who was assistant and co-cinematographer with me. I did the editing alone in my bedroom. It took a few weeks.

I was in trouble for post-production — I didn’t have enough money for it.

I ended up also doing the color grading in my bedroom. But I wasn’t sure that all the images were faithful for a theater screen, so I asked a theater in Paris, Cinéma de l’Etoile, to help me, and with Alexandre Desane, we had this opportunity to go, quite often, in this theater between two screenings, to test the images.

No surprises: some images were actually totally awful on the theater’s screen. I asked a friend who works in color grading, Florent Thoraval, to help me for these few frames because he had some calibrated monitors at home. So we did all the modifications and I tested it in the theater again by doing a mini-DCP of these little parts of the film. I didn’t have the money to do it in Labs.

And then one of my first short films was bought by a TV Channel in France, so I received some money that I directly injected into the sound mixing. I found a professional studio that helped me for a very friendly budget and for two days of sound-mixing.

For the translation of the film, a friend, Claire Martinet, helped me and did all the translation, and with Alexandre we did all the subtitles, one by one, with a special design that we wanted to use for the subtitles.

In the end of the project, I wanted to collaborate with some structures that I really like and support — Paulette Magazine, Fais un Film Putain, which is a real independent organization of guerrilla cinema in Paris, EROIN, which is an awesome association that promotes female directors, GIRLZPOP, and Archive Collective Magazine.

W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?

AV: The worst advice I received is when some people told me to quit because they saw that I was tired and they had this feeling that I was maybe working for nothing. Some people didn’t really understand why I was spending so much time in my room instead of drinking beers with them.

The best advice I received was not to give up.

W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?

AV: I don’t feel really comfortable giving advice to people in general as I’m just starting in filmmaking and that I need advice myself.

But I could say that no matter the difficulties, if you have a goal, don’t give up. Sometimes it can be harder in cinema if you’re a woman, but if you are passionate and dedicated to this craft, I’m sure that everything could happen, no matter the genre.

W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.

AV: I really like the Italian film director, producer, and actress Valeria Golino. She is multidisciplinary and very creative. I really liked her feature film “Miele.” It was touching and so well made. I have a lot of respect for this strong woman.