Huit fois debout

Xabi Molia, 31, entered the world of literature with Fourbi (2000), his first novel which was published by Gallimard. After studying literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he continued his career as a novelist and started making his first shorts, which were produced by his sister Christie Molia. In 2007 he made S'éloigner du rivage with Julie Gayet, who already plays the role of Elsa, and who plays her again in Huit fois debout (Eight Times Up). Xabi today lives in Paris where he splits his time between directing and writing."In Huit Fois Debout (Eight Times Up) I wanted to talk about the story of a woman trying to find her place in society, that is to say looking for a place to live and a function to perform. In many ways, Elsa is a "without": without a job, without a home, without a pedigree and without children as she does not have custody of her son. It is this lack of security that I wanted to film, between the unshakeable will to exist and the sometimes crushing need to let go, to drop everything. If, at the end of my film, audiences have the feeling of having supported, escorted, a character who is both a stranger and someone close, to have gone astray with Elsa rather than having watched someone go under, then I will have the feeling that I have succeeded. For me, cinema is not an observatory, not a balcony from where people can contemplate the common world. It is an experience of empathy with those that we are not, but who are always there, not far from us" (X. Molia).