Mia Hansen-Love

Born on February 5, 1981, Parisian Mia Hansen-Løve is the eldest daughter of two philosophy professors. Her last name is explained by her paternal grandfather, of Danish origin. From her films – especially the heartfelt El porvenir – it can be deduced that she considers her parents a kind of wise man who intellectualizes everything, so they are careful not to express her emotions too much. She was still studying at the institute when the director Olivier Assayas recruited her to intervene as an actress in the shocking End of August, beginning of September , where she plays Vera, the teenager who lives a “Lolita”-style romance with Adrien, a writer played by François Cluzet . The filmmaker trusted her again two years later toThe sentimental destinations , where he gave life to the daughter of the characters of Isabelle Huppert and Charles Berling .

As soon as the filming of this second title finished, he enrolled in the School of Dramatic Art in Paris, which helped him discover that acting was not his thing. She is convinced that she was wrong, so she drops out of school. Assayas, with whom she had continued to have a close relationship, takes advantage of the fact that she writes for Cahiers du Cinéma to get them to recruit her too, so Mia Hansen-Løve collaborates with the prestigious publication between 2003 and 2005. “I don’t know if I contributed much to critics, I was twenty-two years old, I had seen almost no cinema, and I had no vocabulary, but that stage helped me become demanding and improve my writing”. Thanks to this occupation, she finally realizes that she would find herself more fulfilled as a director, and she begins to compose her first shorts. Some critics have pointed out that they have followed the path of the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, who started in that magazine before launching into directing. “It is not for me to proclaim myself his heir, but for those who study my cinema,” he says. “But for example, I like his conception of the director-author, and his idea that the scriptwriter should be in charge of the staging, and that’s why I write my films alone, seeking independence and solitude in that part of the process.”

She made her feature film directorial debut in 2007, with Tout est pardonné , about a father and daughter who reunite more than a decade after he went through serious drug problems. It gets a nomination for best debut feature at the César Awards, and almost unanimous acclaim from critics, who crown it as the great hope of French cinema. During the following years, Mia Hansen-Løve responds to the great expectations that she had raised with the following works of hers. In Le pere de mes enfants , a film producer ( Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), married with three daughters, struggles against his suicidal instincts. The film, which the director based on the true story of the guy who made her previous film, who took his own life, won the Special Jury Prize, in the Un Certain Regard section, at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival . de jeunesse (First love) , an architect ( Lola Créton ) who is in a relationship with her fellow student, is reunited with the man she loved when she was 15, and although she still feels something, both have changed.

Despite the age difference of twenty-six years, he became closer to Olivier Assayas, becoming his partner after he divorced Chinese actress Maggie Cheung. In 2009 both are parents of a girl, named Vicky.

For Eden , the filmmaker was inspired by the life of her younger brother, Sven, who had been a DJ for decades. The story of a DJ (the young Félix De Givry ) helps Mia Hansen-Løve to talk about the difficulty of making dreams come true, and the need to grow up. In a similar way, she thought of her parents –specifically, their separation– to compose her most personal film –and perhaps the best–, El porvenir , about the daily life of a philosophy teacher ( Isabelle Huppert), who faces with enough stoicism and nihilism that her husband abandons her. The disinterest and lack of love of the protagonist for her children is quite striking. The relationship between the main character and a young student serves to contrast youthful idealism with the bourgeois pragmatism that is acquired over time. Writing and shooting this film meant for her a kind of exorcism to free herself from her inner demons. “For a long time I hesitated whether to write about this issue,” she declares. “It scared me, and I also thought that the resulting script would be very pessimistic. But then the public and the critics point to it as my most optimistic work, because it talks about how you can be happy without having someone to be in love with”.

Maya seems to be a turning point in her filmography, because she develops a plot for the first time abroad. Follow the journey of the thirty-year-old war journalist Gabriel (his usual secondary of her Roman Kolinka, protagonist here), who begins to reconsider the idealism that led him to choose his profession, after being kidnapped by ISIS in Syria. Once released, he travels to Goa, the region of India that he has idealized because he spent his childhood summers there. In that place he meets Monty, his godfather, but he can’t help but fall in love with Maya, his teenage daughter. It would seem that the relationship between the two characters quite recreates the one he had with Assayas. He again relapses (it is a true obsession) in the lack of maternal love, since the mother of the protagonist treats him with a shocking indifference.

He does not regret transforming the experiences of people around him into cinema. “I have tried to write about issues and people that are not so close to me, because perhaps that would be less emotionally aggressive for me, but it doesn’t work out for me,” she confesses. “I feel like writing about people who are very close to me and whom I love. I suppose that what I pursue by doing it is, in some way, to contribute to those beautiful and singular people leaving a trace, that it remains forever”.

At the moment she is still in her thirteen, because she will talk about a couple of directors, like her and Assayas, in her next work, Bergman Island , which will be the first in English, with a Hollywood star, Mia Wasikowska . The protagonists travel to the island that inspired the great Ingmar Bergman , to write the scripts for his next films there.