Director's statement:
The seed of this film came from a small moment: watching a father tell his daughter a lie, then seeing her pause, consider it, and shift ever so slightly in how she carried herself. That moment stayed with me. It happened during the pandemic, when time felt strange and my own inner life started to take over my entire world. That feeling has never really left me since. I realised that it is not only the dramatic lies that change us, but the subtle ones, the omissions, the silences. These are the foundations on which darkness grows. It is in our quiet, private reactions to trauma that terrible acts are born.
In Détente, Jean has become accustomed to lying, and addicted to curating Margot's reality. It began with good intentions, even noble ones, but hiding the truth has become survival for his character, but at the cost of authenticity. For Margot, who is stepping into adolescence, this is the soil she grows in. What does it mean to come of age in a world where truth is unstable?
For me, this film is not primarily about war. The story I want to tell is about what happens inside the four walls of a relationship built on unstable ground. It is about the hero’s journey of a young girl forced to find her own truth when the people she depends on cannot give it to her.
We live in a time when truth is under attack, when falsehoods, even small ones, are allowed to circulate and grow. To take the easy path, to tell ourselves we are sparing someone, or to avoid a difficult reality, only allows the lie to grow unchecked. And when a lie grows, it metastasises. It becomes the basis for destruction, for anger, for conflict. Religious stories tell us this clearly: the lie is the original sin. It is not just the act itself, but the hiding, the masking, that sets the stage for everything that follows. That’s what struck me most as I developed this story. Authenticity is not a luxury. It’s the very fabric of who we are. And yet, we so often commoditise it in order to get by, to fit in, to protect ourselves. That contradiction sits at the heart of this three-hander.
Although I am of Jewish origin and the history here resonates deeply with me, this film is not about persecution. It is about the nature of relationships; how they are essential for growth and purpose and how they hold us back. In writing it, I also drew from my own formative experiences of love, loss, and two toxic formative relationships where all sense of truth is lost in a maze of competing world views.
We have a wonderful team ready to bring this film to life, and my hope is simple: that it resonates beyond its historical setting, speaking to anyone who has wrestled with truth, lies, and the fragile bonds between us. Thank you for considering Détente.
