an overwhelming film on autism, difference and the role of caregivers

Present us Camille, the heroine of your film …

This forties lives alone with her teenage daughter, while leading her career as a lawyer. She is also a caregiver who deploys immense energy to defend the well-being of her brother Pierrot, a different person (embodied by Grégory Gadebois). Courageous and determined, she is a woman in search of justice. Reverse of the medal: she lives in a permanent desire to control everything. Pierrot’s issues eventually rub shoulders with Camille’s relationships, because she concretely lives the consequences of her brother’s difference: mental load, lack of reception and suitable treatment structure. When you are helping like it, you collide reality.

A question underpins your film: how, within our family history, can we find our own freedom without abandoning our loved ones to their problems?

This question fascinates me indeed, because it is impossible to accompany a person in the long term if one does not listen to his emotions and his own needs. Caregivers must manage to recharge their batteries to be able to continue to act with those they love. Finding a place for Pierrot is a long path strewn with pitfalls which opens, fortunately, on the promise of a new life for the two characters. By looking for a place for her brother, Camille will access her deep nature and will finally agree with time and space. A place for Pierrot is a place for each of us, helped and caregivers.

Why does Camille decide to remove her brother from the medical home in which he lives?

It makes this decision impulsively, after having noticed that Pierrot undergoes overmedication. While waiting to find her a new place, she welcomes her in her small apartment, which is not without difficulties. Circulation, noise, pollution, aggressive and sometimes anxiety -provoking rhythm: Pierrot is disoriented. The big city is not adapted to its operation.

How did you accompany Grégory Gadebois in the construction of his character?

“Don’t think you play an autistic person,” I asked him first. I wanted the spectator to be identified with this hero. It is not a film on autism, but about difference. The word autistic is also pronounced once in the film, after thirty minutes. Pierrot has a lot of humor and a great sense of listening. All the moments when he is in a non -verbal expression in the film are very powerful. We have worked around the character’s sensoriality as well as on his childhood part and his poetry.

This fiction joins your story. How did the difference of your brother built you, as a woman and artist?

I discovered the world through the gaze of my older brother, Vincent. By living alongside him, I considered, during my first ten years, that it was the rest of the world which was dysfunction. Around 11 years old, when I understood that it was different, it was a shock: no care or adapted place of life were offered to him, while it has extraordinary potential and that it is a treasure for society! This observation put me very angry. For me, my brother was superior in everything, always in the place of his truth, incapable of lie or concealment. In my own way, I also felt unsuitable and I wanted to explore my own singularity. I found in the work of actress, then of director, a way of being in the world.

Why are you approaching the problem of overmedication through Pierrot’s journey?

Because I observed it for a long time! Before being diagnosed with autistic, Vincent was considered psychotic and therefore took treatment totally unsuitable for his case. Autism is ninety years of wandering in diagnoses. The first French test centers were not created until 2005. For the past fifteen years, the training of psychiatrists fortunately has evolved towards a better knowledge of neurodevelopment and diseases of the autistic spectrum. Scientists now know that we are born autistic and that we do not become so. We also know that autistic people are not all similar: some disorders can be similar to schizophrenia, bipolarity or psychotic forms, but you have to be very careful.

What would be the tracks to reduce their medication?

It is necessary to set up the good practices recommended by the High Authority for Health. I think for example of the pictograms and the paintings that Camille uses in the film and which allow Pierrot to better unroll her actions during the day. These practices help autistic people to balance their sensoriality, reduce their anxieties and invasive behavioral disorders. This reduces medication significantly. But this type of care in suitable places is unfortunately not yet generalized in France.

Faced with the lack of reception places for adults autistic, you have invented a solution for your brother. Tell us …

I had the click by making a documentary on agroecology, We are 20 years old to change the world (released in 2018, editor’s note). I had the idea of ​​creating a place where autistic people could be supported while acting for the development of a healthy diet. Two years later, Vincent’s first house opened in Mers-les-Bains, in Somme Bay. A second was created last year in Goult, in the Luberon. They are on a human scale and welcome a dozen people maximum.

Are these two places approved by the State?

Yes, it was one of my big battles! I absolutely kept there so that they were sustainable. Real estate and the environmental program are the responsibility of my association, supported by private funds. But the operation of the two houses is funded by the departmental councils and the regional health agency. In Vincent’s houses as in the film’s farm, some residents cultivate the land, others sell organic products to the grocery store or on the village market. What could be better than allowing different people to find their place while supporting access to a healthy diet? The real inclusion is it!

Releasing the land from synthesis chemistry and freeing certain autism from overmedication, is it the same approach?

Yes. Between the adapted support for autism and agroecology, there is the same philosophy, respectful of the lifetime as a whole. Taking care of humans and earth within a balanced ecosystem is the very definition of permaculture! In the film, after having been released from an overmedication that destroyed him, Pierrot finally opens up to the world and can develop all his potentials. When he discovers the farm in which he will live on the Opal Coast, he is amazed by the rhythm of the tides, and the power of the wind and the earth. In direct connection to the nature in which he feels balanced, Pierrot evolves more serenely. For example, he no longer feels the need to wear a fog helme, as he did in town.

Is your film militant?

No, I’m not trying to convince anyone. I am content to conduct my civic commitment on a daily basis, by working for my association, while continuing my career as a acting and filmmaker.

Do you think the singular history of Pierrot do you think is a universal scope?

Yes, this is exactly what I want to transmit through this film: the definition of disability means to experience limits. However, we are all, during our life, confronted with our own limits through the test of the disease, the separation or the accompaniment of a person at the end of their life. The difference therefore tells each of us. My brother’s is a gift. He is my third eye, the door of my conscience.