Before Everything Disappears

A conversation with Noémie D. Leclerc

To mark the announcement of her debut feature film, filmmaker Noémie D. Leclerc sat down with Jean-Pierre Sirois-Trahan, Full Professor of Cinema at Université Laval, for a conversation about cinéma direct, memory, fiction, love, and the urgency of filming what might otherwise vanish.

NDL : Hello, my name is Noémie. I’m 28 years old and I’m a director.JPST : You just presented yourself like the subjects at the end of your movie, didn’t you?NDL : Try it.JPST : Hello, my name is Jean-Pierre. I’m 53 years old and I’m a Full Professor of Cinema at Université Laval since 2003.NDL : Don’t you hold a joint PhD from Paris Sorbonne and Université de Montréal?JPST : I don’t like to brag and this is not about me. (Laughs)NDL : You’re right.JPST : So… Why did you do this movie?NDL : No softball questions?JPST : Why did you do this movie, instead of any other movie?NDL : This feels like an accusation a little bit. Do you know Robert Filliou? The French artist associated with Fluxus?JPST : I do.NDL : Well he said : Art is what makes life more interesting than art. And I always firmly believed in that. So to me, the most sociopolitical film in 2026 is a film that isn’t sociopolitical. I think we need movies that feel small to help reclaim a sense of agency, to dream ordinary dreams and feel the weight of kindness again. To escape boredom and to remember love, and ultimately how to participate. And yeah, I couldn’t find that movie anywhere so I guess I found it in myself…JPST : You found a story that was already there or you made it up?NDL : Why would you ask that?JPST : I’m asking because I see the heritage and tradition of cinéma direct in your movie, and by definition cinéma direct is a cinema of truth, but it is also the truth of cinema. You expose yourself, your crew, the manipulations and in-between moments, so as an audience you have to ask yourself : What is real, and what isn’t?NDL : It’s all real.JPST : All of it?NDL : I’ve always been a very good liar. It drove my mom crazy.JPST : What are you lying about?NDL : I filmed my friends? Or are they actors? No, I’ve known them since forever! If by forever you mean summer of 2023. Of course not. Was I scouting for the most ordinary stories or did I do an exercise of proximity? I’m creating a conversation, a dance. Disbelief, followed by a transparency and an honesty that legitimizes that disbelief, allowing it to transform itself into belief and trust. It means involvement and participation. You become part of it without even thinking about it, and that is what I’m looking for. There’s a screen but there’s no smoke. And then, what you see is not a representation of love anymore, it is love. And you’re not just witnessing it as in any other documentary or fiction movie, you’re experiencing it… in present tense. It is a surgically constructed puzzle to make you believe everything by doubting just enough, and then letting go. For example, with Tony on the bridge, when you get to the end of that scene, the question you’re asking yourself is not "is he gonna jump?", it’s "is he gonna jump?". You feel him close, it hurts a little, and then you find yourself being concerned about him. So now, am I a filmmaker that is bringing fiction to life? Or am I a filmmaker that is bringing life to the fiction? The only thing I know for sure, going forward, making movies, is I hope that feeling of nowness is how you’ll know it’s a Noémie D. Leclerc film.JPST : Can you tell me one thing that is true and one thing that isn’t?NDL : One thing that is very true - and it was very very hard to accept - is I only filmed my adoptive dad once, by accident. It’s the whole premise of the movie. You know, growing up I would always have a camera in my hand, but I never turned it towards him. I spent months looking through years and years of footage and never found anything. It broke my heart. The worst part is, the only time I - accidentally - filmed him was with a shitty digital camera. I was young and I thought I was taking a picture, and you see him there, posing with my mom, holding his coca-cola can, smiling and being amazed by the beautiful bicycle path behind him. He never rode a bike in his life.JPST : What about a thing that isn’t true?NDL : I don’t know for sure that he never rode a bike; I just never saw him on a bike.JPST : What about that photoshoot session? Or the boom operator’s love story?NDL : Yes.JPST : What?NDL : …?JPST : You know, Godard used to tell a story about how, during a shoot on a highway shoulder, a policeman approached him: "You aren’t allowed to be here; it’s reserved for emergencies." — "Precisely, there is an emergency; we must film before everything disappears." It seems to me that this is your very project.NDL : I have a very bad memory and I’m a very nostalgic person. And I learned the hard way that we tend to film what’s extraordinary at the expense of what’s important. Something that is just there, but goes unnoticed. Something that is so fragile and fleeting and beautiful, that we need to pass on, but probably won’t be able to.JPST : A cheap and lazy critique of your film would be to say that it’s a narcissistic impulse to film yourself and your inner circle, without it being of interest to anyone outside that group—as if you were simply showing us a home movie.NDL : Thank you! (Laughs)JPST : I think that would be to misunderstand what cinéma direct is at its best. On the one hand, like we said earlier, cinéma direct is not reality, but a mediation of reality; and like the great examples from the sixties, you weave this mediation into the very process of the film. On the other hand, if you are one of the main characters in the film, it isn't to put yourself in the spotlight; it’s because the film is a network of relationships which the film crew is a part of; direct cinema has always been about communities from which filmmakers do not detach themselves, but rather embed themselves into to become part of a 'rhizome' (Deleuze and Guattari); in your case that also means having no real control over your movie’s technicalities and aesthetics. How does that fit into our very curated world?NDL : Even if it’s tempting, I think it would be wrong of me to try and fit into our very curated world.JPST : Why is that?NDL : One time, when I was experiencing doubt about my film, a friend – who’s a huge sports fan – told me a story about how LeBron James told a very nervous Luka Dončić before his debut with the Lakers "Be your f-cking self. Don't fit in, fit the f-ck out". It stayed with me. I think it’s better to dominate and play your natural game rather than try to change to fit into a pre-existing system. That doesn’t mean that it was an easy film to make.JPST : Because you had a very small team?NDL : Yes, because I wanted to approach it like a ballerina.JPST : Like a ballerina?NDL : It was very important for me that the movie looked easy to make. That is also why I chose a small team. Once again, in a matter of creating involvement and participation in the audience. I wanted people to come out of the theater and to think: I need to go make a movie right now.JPST : Well it worked, for me at least. I lost my mother two years ago and I’m still reeling from the shock. Unfortunately, I have no moving images of her from the time I knew her - only moving photographs - and it made me want to make up for it, with my father. To film reality is always to film potential ghosts; and by this very gesture, we rescue them from another death, even more terrible: oblivion.NDL : You definitely can’t translate that feeling into a movie with technical prowess and a very polished aesthetic.JPST : Maybe you can.NDL : Maybe, but I don’t think so. There is a point where, in every art form, you reach a technical summit. What happens then is almost as terrifying as it is interesting, because you have to truly ask yourself; what is cinema meant for and why am I doing it this way? Innovations need to come from elsewhere. You need to have an original idea and most importantly, you have to make a decision. It fills me with enthusiasm.JPST : Enthusiasm.NDL : Do we really need anything else?