Sophie Sophie Sophie

“Sophie Sophie Sophie” is the first film I made entirely using AI. All the images were generated with the assistance of Gen Video AI tools.

The writer Marie-Philippe Joncheray helped me refine the screenplay. The music was composed by Guillaume Martel, and I received some advice from Carlo de Togni. I took care of everything else. It took me nine months to perfect the visuals, sound and narration. The most important thing for me on this project was to tell a story that was intimate and sensitive. In fact, it was following a breakup and a period of depression that I started writing about my romantic past. Little by little, I transformed autobiographical memories into fiction.

I have been making films for 25 years. But apart from “Vietnam Paradiso,” my first documentary film made in 2000, I had never wanted to show my face in any of my films. Between myself and the viewer, I wore a mask, often a fantasy one. And it is these AI machines that have allowed me to personally stage myself. Of course, I tried to pictorialize my appearance to accept my “presence on screen.” But my fictional avatar resembles me, at least in my eyes 🙂

Another challenge I had to overcome: not to only give my male point of view on this story. To shed my “male gaze.” I am neither an alpha male nor a beta male. And I am trying to understand how the #MeToo movement requires us to rethink our masculinity.

These AI machines without a human soul, with their unprecedented combinatorial mechanisms, help me push the boundaries of my imagination and to… Renew. Cocteau said, “No open door to chance frightens poetry, already so difficult to capture. It is tamed with a touch of the unexpected.” These machines help bring about this unexpectedness because they never fully follow all the instructions given to them through reference images and words written in prompt. The use of these tools aims to illustrate with freshness what humans sometimes struggle so much to express: love.

“Sophie Sophie Sophie” is a short film that stands on its own. It is also the first step in a series project currently being written.

Built With

• capcut
• elevenlabs
• freepik
• hailuo
• kling
• luma
• midjourney
• mistral
• reve
• runway
• vmake