Sandrine Bonnaire
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Her Name Is Sabine
Date: 14 July 2008
Gemma Tortella gets to meet the director of this highly acclaimed and deeply affecting documentary.
We had a phase a few months ago when the cinema department put on Friday lunchtime staff screenings, one of these was Her Name Is Sabine , the directorial debut of the French actress Sandrine Bonnaire. It's not the kind of film I would normally go out of my way to watch as it's a documentary charting the life of Sandrine's autistic sister Sabine which sounds a bit depressing on paper but it really is a wonderful film. From the start it struck me as beautifully edited - a strong narrative compared an archive of family film footage of Sabine in her youth with her current life now spent in a residential care home, an immense improvement from her five damanging years in a psychiatric institution. The contrast between the two periods is stark but it is also fascinating and enlightening. Not only do we learn about Sabine and the terrible effect the hospital had on her but about the impact different types of mental health care can have on people in general. We meet some of the other residents at her home and I was especially touched by the interview with the mother of Olivier telling us how she once took his day time epilepsy medication by mistake and slept for almost two days the effect was so strong. This helped her and also us the viewers to understand his behaviour and responses to the world around him.
For Sandrine this film is political with the specific aim of changing the way those with autism are treated in France. It has been very successful in France and also won the 2007 FIPRESCI Cannes Award. All of which led to a meeting with Nikolas Sarkozy and other senior French Government ministers and she was happy to inform me that some changes in social policy have already been implemented.
I was very excited to discover that Sandrine was coming to the ICA to premiere the film and managed to get an interview with her at the end of a long day of press interviews punctuated by countless cigarette breaks! Please listen below.
Her Name is Sabine is at the ICA until 20 July.
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