French Writer Christine Angot on Confronting Incest in Her Filmmaking Debut, ‘A Family’

With over 20 books to her name, author Christine Angot has been a pillar of France’s literary scene for more than three decades. Her breakthrough novel Incest, published in 1999, was a blisteringly honest account of the author’s rape by her estranged father while she was a teenager.

Many of her subsequent novels, including Le Voyage dans l’Est (Voyage in the East), which won the prestigious Prix Médicis in 2021, revisit a trauma that shaped much of Angot’s work, as well as her life as a woman and mother.

Although her books often toe the line between autobiography and fiction — a genre the French have dubbed “autofiction” — Angot prefers to call them “novels.” For her first-ever film, the intimate and piercing documentary A Family (Une Famille), she leans heavily on the autobiographical side, turning the camera on herself and her immediate family to ask a barrage of difficult questions about the life-changing events of her youth.

From its jarring opening sequence, where Angot bursts into her stepmother’s apartment with a camera crew à la Michael Moore, to lengthy interviews with her birth mother, former partner and daughter, the writer-turned-director crosses France in relentless pursuit of answers that have previously eluded her. As its title suggests, A Family is, in some ways, a family movie — one that bravely attempts to rebuild a clan that had long been broken, while perhaps allowing Angot to find some peace of mind.

Prior to her feature’s Berlinale debut, the 64-year-old author — who also co-wrote the screenplays to Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In and Both Sides of the Blade — sat down with THR to explain why she finally chose to shoot her first movie, the differences between writing and filmmaking, and how she’s been mistreated by the French media.

For decades you’ve had a successful career as a writer, penning several bestsellers and winning some major book awards in France. What impulsion drove you to make a film instead of writing another novel?

“Impulsion” is a good word to describe it. Back in 2021 when my last novel was released, I was set to go on a promotional tour in the east of France, and I thought it would be a good idea to bring along a camera in the event that my step-siblings or stepmother would finally reach out to me after so many years of silence. I was also scared to travel alone to the east, which for me was an extremely hostile place, and so the camera would provide a form of protection — both because it can record what happens to you and because there would be someone operating it. To be with a cameraperson is to be with someone who sees the same things that you do, and I needed that reassurance.

Did you know what you were going to shoot?

No — I was completely shaped by events as they happened, starting with my decision to visit the house in Strasbourg where my father once lived, and where my stepmother still resides. I didn’t think I’d be able to ring the bell, but having the camera crew encouraged me to act.

Do you think the constant presence of the camera also changed the way people reacted to the questions you asked them — whether it was your stepmother, or, later, your mother, ex-partner or daughter?

People always assume the camera changes your behavior in a bad way, but I’m not so sure of that. I think it changes your behavior because you know what you’re saying will be preserved forever. And it also it forces you to say something — anything at all — because it’s there. There are things you would never dare to say in regular life, including to people you know very well, but because of the camera, you suddenly decide to say it.

Did the camera have that same effect on you?

For the scene in Strasbourg with my stepmother, if the camera crew hadn’t been there, I don’t think I would have been able to force my way through her front door the way I did. For the other scenes, the camera pushed us to communicate in ways we never had done beforehand, partly because of the whole filmmaking apparatus — the crew that had traveled by train, the camera operators standing around, the soundman, etc. There’s a formality to a film shoot that obliges you to have more than just a casual conversation.

Before making the film, I assumed you had already had such tough conversations with your family members about incest, given how you’ve written about it in so many of your novels.

Not necessarily. The film was the first time my family said certain things because it was the first time that I asked them certain questions. When it comes to incest, people always assume that the victim needs to talk endlessly about their suffering, as if we were only objects of confession for the tabloids. They can never imagine that we need to ask them questions, that we need to hear what they think about what happened.

Compared to all the books you’ve written, what was it like making your first movie? How did you find it different from the writing process?

When you write a book you have the sensation of absolute freedom — but you can also lose yourself in such freedom, which is really a false sense of freedom. When you finally manage to write something you’re happy with, your sense of joy can be extremely powerful, but it’s a joy you experience all by yourself. Whereas when you’re making a film, there are tons of limits to deal with, and the film winds up getting shaped by those limits. Also, there’s a political side to filmmaking because you’re working within a collective. There are always people by your side, which means you’re never alone in your madness as a creator. That’s the main difference — when you make a film the creative madness is shared, whether with the editor or the camera crew.

You shot A Family with the DP Caroline Champetier (Holy Motors), who’s also credited as “artistic collaborator.” How did you two work together?

When I realized I wanted a camera on my book tour, I immediately called up Caroline — not just as a cinematographer, but as someone who would be there to protect me in such a difficult and dangerous place. That’s what I meant by artistic collaboration. In terms of the shooting, I didn’t think about the photography that much and was driven by events as they occurred. For the scene with my stepmother, it was like an action sequence where Caroline and the other operator had to deal with what was happening. They were afraid to enter the house with me, and I had to beckon them to come inside.

That scene is shocking. The other shocking scene is the clip from the talk show Tout le monde en parle from 1999, where you walked off the set after being insulted by the host and guests. Why do you think you caused such a violent reaction among certain members of the French media?

Back in 1999, I had already been writing for 10 years, but people hardly read my books. Suddenly with Incest, I was thrust into the spotlight, and the media didn’t know how to deal with me. I had written a novel, except I was using the first person, “I.” Incest was speaking about my own experience, but it was written in a highly literary style. And it was about domination — because incest is domination. If I had just been a victim speaking about my suffering, the media would have loved it. That’s what you always see on talk shows: a victim talks about their trauma, and then some expert chimes in to explain things to the audience. But I was doing both at the same time: I was a victim and I was articulating what happened to me. And they didn’t know how to deal with it.

It was destabilizing for them.

Yes, because a victim, whether of incest or something else, tends to be defined by their trauma. Everyone else looks down on them with pity — they try to protect them or to sympathize with them, which means they continue to hold power over them. I’ve always refused that position, because I want people to look up at me, not down.

It’s the same thing in your movie: instead of appearing to your stepmother and others as a victim, you confront them head-on and ask them to react.

Exactly, and there are things in A Family that I haven’t really seen before. Usually, you see these kinds of confrontational scenes on reality TV, where it’s all staged and prepared beforehand, and the characters pretend to ring the bell and open the door. Or it’s a work of fiction and scripted in advance, such as in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration, where there are trained actors playing the scenes. In my movie, everything you see is real and nothing was planned ahead of time. All we did was film the present.