Interview: Stéphane Brizé – A Good Little Soldier

From The Measure of a Man and At War to Another World, his films have traced how economic systems can narrow the space for individual dignity. In A Good Little Soldier (read ★★★½ review), which premiered in Venice’s main competition, Stéphane Brizé turns that scrutiny toward Carla Moretti, a human-resources manager whose devotion to her job has become a way of life. Played by Alba Rohrwacher, Carla is both a beneficiary of the corporate system and one of its instruments, tasked with enforcing its demands even as she begins to recognize the damage they cause. The film’s title captures that uneasy contradiction: Carla follows orders with the discipline of a soldier, but the more faithfully she serves, the harder it becomes to distinguish professionalism from complicity. A fan of his previous under-seen 2023 Venice Film Festival entry Out of Season (read ★★★★ review), it was at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival I got to chat with Brizé about building the character with Rohrwacher, staging the film’s satirical corporate videos, and what Carla’s story reveals about power, work and the possibility of resistance in a patriarchal world. Note: Answers are mostly in French.