Interview: Delphine Girard – Quitter la nuit (Through the Night)

Belgian filmmaker Delphine Girard‘s debut film takes a plunge into the murky world she created with her 2018 short film Une sœur – an Academy Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Film. Using the identical ensemble welcoming back players Veerle Baetens, Selma Alaoui, and Guillaume Duhesme, Quitter la nuit (Through the Night) broadens their horizons by delving deeper into the humanity of the trio. Similar to the recent wave of intricate courtroom dramas, this first feature discards simplistic characterizations and favors a more complex journey into the nigh….and collective psyche.

Selected in the Giornate degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival where the film won the Audience Award, Quitter la nuit is impactful cinema — its a complex thinking piece of a text. I got to speak to Delphine on the Lido – we discussed how she extended the short into the feature and how her trio of actors converged onto the project, we discussed the psychology of Veerle Baetens’ character, and how the characters reframe their own truths.