A LIFE LIKE ANY OTHER by Faustine Cros has World Premiere at DOK Leipzig 2022
We’re so happy to welcome on board the feature debut by Faustine Cros A LIFE LIKE ANY OTHER which had its World Premiere at DOK Leipzig’s International Competition!
Faustine’s father immortalized in family films the most beautiful moments of his life, while her mother’s difficulties hit the blind spot of his images. Today, the filmmaker revisits these images to tell a different story: that of a woman who sees her role as a mother taking away her freedom step by step.
A LIFE LIKE ANY OTHER is produced by Julie Freres of Dérives (Belgium) and Camille Laemlé of Les Films d’Ici (France), in co-production with SIC – Sound image culture, CBA-Centre de l’Audiovisuel à Bruxelles, and RTBF.
Anna Berthollet, founder and CEO of Lightdox, comments: “We were deeply moved by Cros’s masterful way of subtly and intelligently expressing the emotions and frustrations of her mother. The film highlights the issues of women’s autonomy and the limitations that patriarchal society imposes, the challenges of being a mother and having ambitions outside of the family, all told through the intimate lens of her own family with rich archival material weaved throughout. We believe these topics are extremely timely and universally important and we’re proud to come on board and help with bringing this touching and sensitive film to an international audience.”
Director Faustine Cros says: “With all these images (the archives and the ones I am filming today), I decided to make a film about my mother and her difficulties with motherhood. In the editing, the footage and my voiceover all come together to tell her story and interrogate her depression in the light of the sexist hold of an era; an era where it was still considered normal for women to give everything up for their children.
In this work, I wish to highlight how intimacy can be political. Hinged on my personal and family life, the film broke away from an individual story to be placed in larger contexts: family, femininity, society. I am convinced that my mother’s story is not an isolated case and still resonates nowadays.”
Born in 1988, Faustine Cros graduated from INSAS (Belgium) in editing. In her work, she plays with hybrid forms between documentary, auto-fiction, experimental, mixing her own images and family archives. Her graduation film “La Détesteuse” was selected and awarded at many international festivals.
A LIFE LIKE ANY OTHER was developed through Les Rencontres d’Août in Lussass (2019), Focus CoPro’ at Cannes Film Festival (2019), Pitching at Millennium Film Festival in Bruxelles (2019), a residency at SIC – Sound Image Culture in Bruxelles (2019) and First Cut Lab Belgium (2022).