Emphatically indebted to the hardcore vérité aesthetic of Frederick Wiseman, with no voiceover to explain anything or any captions to elucidate who’s who, this French documentary tracks the long process by which la Fémis, France’s most prestigious film school, winnows down thousands of applicants to just a lucky few.
As the head of the institute’s directing programme, director Claire Simon (Gare du Nord) has an insider’s understanding of the process but films the endless debates between examiners with a cool detachment, seemingly taking no sides. Ultimately, this is much less about the applicants than about the teachers and industry professionals who give up their time to decide who is worthy of pursuing a career. It’s clear that they want to run it as meritocratically as possible, but what’s interesting is how the criteria for what talent is and who gets to judge it come up for debate.
About halfway through, one examiner defends an applicant’s poor communication skills by pointing that the “director of Drive” (ie Nicolas Winding Refn) has zero communication skills with his crew on set, but look at what a great film-maker he is. It takes all types, and a village, and a lot of determination to make it to the folding chair behind the camera.
