La Reine des pommes

Valérie Donzelli started studying architecture before moving into film. Her first film experience was on Sandrine Veysset's Martha... Martha, in which she played the lead role, and for which she won the Prix Michel Simon. She also won acting awards for Jean Pascal Hattu's 7 ans in Florence and Turin. She has worked with Anne Fontaine, Guillaume Nicloux, Agnès Varda, Alain Guiraudie, Delphine Gleize, Gilles Marchand, and Viriginie Wagon among others. In 2007 she directed her first short, Il fait beau dans la plus belle ville du monde, which was selected for the Directors" Fortnight in en 2008. La Reine des Pommes is her first feature. "What I like about comedy is that it makes it possible to look into a number of situations and themes, it always seems light, because it's funny even if deep down the subject is more serious (...) I was obvious that the subject of La Reine des pommes, splitting up, was not particularly original, and what I really wanted the direction to be really personal. Cinema is above all a playful art, where everything is there to recreate reality. All I wanted was for my film to take place in the intimacy of the form and for it to be consistent. (...) I like Agnès Varda's films for their freshness, and Eric Rohmer's for their simplicity and the performance of the actors, which is always a little outmoded. I like the characters to speak well and for them always to be faced with intimate problems. I am very attached to François Truffaut's filmmaking, which always, in one way or another, deals with questions of intimacy. And also, obviously, Jacques Démy, who is the master of combing lightness and form, facing the profoundness of what he is telling".