Filmmaker Statement

WHY IT IS What lengths can someone go to for the validation, romance, and comfort of another? During the first Covid-19 lockdown, I, like many others found myself experiencing a level of desire for human contact unlike ever before. As a foreigner locked down in a city where I knew no one, and with bars, gyms, libraries, etc. closed, my main source of human contact were dates with people I met online. Illegal dates, because I would leave the permitted one-kilometer radius to meet them (at the height of the lockdown, Paris forbid journeys outside of a one-kilometer radius). Dangerous dates, because there were no public spaces for our first meeting. And dates where I found myself vulnerable, being in a foreign culture and in a second language. These experiences inspired the idea for my film, T’es Belle.