Gigi (17 years old) and Monica (15 years old) live out their love with their gang in Bucharest North station. A newcomer is on his way - Monica is expecting a baby. Gigi wants to leave the nondescript streets. He tells us his dreams: “To find a roof, start a family, build another family out of that family, and on like that ... till the end”. Is this child going to be born - where and how - and what will he or she ...? By creating another life, Gigi and Monica go beyond the street child’s place in the world, and bring us up against the Universal.
“After three years at High School and a few years working for news, TV reports, I discovered the magic of documentaries, and I started working with Benoît Dervaux and Yasmina Abdellahoui for Gigi, Monica... and Bianca, a documentary about a love story between young adults living in the streets of Bucharest, produced by the Dardenne brothers. The construction was complex and close to a drama fiction with a huge amount of material. The feeling, to create a story with a classical dramatic plot, staying close to the protagonists and to share their lives, was a discovery. Their questions, doubts, convictions and mistakes were mine. With distance, discovering their psychology was magic. The editing room's intimacy develops the connection with the real characters in spite of the filter of the shooting. With the directors we search for a way to tell their real story in docudrama construction. This experience confirmed the style of movie I want to work in, and pushed me further in this career.”
Marie–Hélène Dozo, editor of Gigi, Monica... and Bianca1
- 1Roger Crittenden, Fine Cuts, Interviews on the Practice of European Film Editing (New York: Routledge, 2018).
