Debut director Martijn Maria Smits's Tiger competitor C'est déjà l'été wasn't just inspired by the Dardennes, he tells Geoffrey Macnab
It’s almost inevitable that critics are already trying to pin the “Dardenne” label on young Dutch filmmaker Martijn Maria Smits. After all, his debut feature was shot in Seraing, Liege, the setting for many Dardenne brothers films.
The irony is that Smits wasn’t lured to Seraing by the Dardennes. What took him there initially was a desire to work in an industrial heartland. “Seraing was the best option. It was close to Holland. I don’t have a driver’s licence and I don’t have much money, so it was logical that I went there.”
Smits quickly fell in love with Seraing. The people there were still openly nostalgic for their industrial past. “They have a warm heart for the work they used to do.” Yes, Smits admits, he was an admirer of the Dardenne brothers. However, he didn’t realise at first that they had shot their movies in precisely the locations he was planning to use. “The Dardennes always shoot in close so you don’t see much of the environment. I was walking and I thought some places look familiar!”
The main protagonist of C'est déjà l'été is Eric, a wild teenager who bunks off school and messes around with guns. After many casting sessions with kids who were “too nice” and wanted to be in a Harry Potter movie, he found local kid Benjamin Willem. Benjamin was tough and truculent. What’s more, he had a cinematic face.
“In the beginning, it was very rough when we were rehearsing. He was walking like was a gangster. He wanted to be in a gangster movie,” the director recalls. Smits didn’t tell him much about the project other than that he was going to be driving a moped round town and that he was going to be playing a young guy who steals.
Smits studied documentary. Now, as he puts it, he has “fallen into fiction,” but his films still have a strong verité feel. Having made C'est déjà l'été in Seraing, he has now decamped to Buenos Aires where he is plotting a film about slum dwellers making a living by sifting through the garbage, looking for material they can sell. “That’s the thing I really like,” the director says of his foray to South America. “I go to Seraing. I don’t speak the language and I don’t know anybody… In Buenos Aires, it’s the same.”
In other words, Smits relishes plunging into new worlds. He is as keen an admirer of Walter Salles and Carlos Reygadas as he is of the Dardennes. The director is clearly delighted to be competing in Rotterdam. “I always go every year… we always secretly go upstairs, steal posters and try to get in touch with filmmakers. In that way, I am a real nerd. It’s so weird – IFFR is for Tsai Ming-liang, Harmony Korine and all the big names. Now I am selected, I still can’t believe it!”
More on C'est déjà l'été here.