He is one of the emerging figures of Norwegian cinema.
At 47, screenwriter and director Eskil Vogt not only co-wrote the excellent
Julie in 12 chapters,
directed by Joachim Trier and critically acclaimed at the last Cannes Film Festival, but his second film,
The Innocents,
has just won two awards. at the Gérardmer festival, that of the critics and that of the public.
Smiling, affable and thoughtful, this spindly forty-year-old with clear eyes is easy to relate to.
His curiosity is great.
We understand better why the man is able to sign a generational film on the torments of a thirties in love, as well as a horror film with a supernatural atmosphere featuring children with frightening powers.
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When we qualify
The Innocents
as a genre film like Carpenter's
Village of the Damned
, Cronenberg's
Scanners
or even
Brian De Palma's
Fury , Eskil Vogt rears up a bit.
“In reality,
he rectifies,
the starting point of this film dates back to my desire to stage the magic of childhood.
I wanted to tell the story of a group of children playing together.
And at the heart of their games suddenly nestles the inexplicable.
A magical element.
I thought to myself that I will treat this element as if it were real.”
It is in this way that
The Innocents
quietly enters the fantastic.
Through the small door of innocent play.
The plot depicts a family that settles in a quite ordinary bar of buildings.
The two girls, Ida and Anna, are forced to acclimatize to their new surroundings.
The eldest, Anna, has regressive autism.
I liked being able to experience the total freedom provided by walks in the undergrowth.
It is a place that is both dark and liberating.
Very transgressive.
The power of the imagination is strong here
Eskil Vogt.
The girls soon meet a group of children from modest families.
While the parents are busy, Ben, Aïsha, Anna and Ida venture into the nearby forest.
This is where the magic comes in. During the long days of this northern summer, far from the gaze of adults, the small group develops paranormal powers.
Telepathically, Anna who is autistic, will finally be able to communicate with others.
Children can understand each other without speaking, move small objects, move the swings, stir the grains of the sandbox.
As the film progresses, we realize that Anna is the most powerful of them.
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"For me, it was important that the plot be set in the real world,"
continues Vogt.
Between the ages of 5 and 7, I lived in a large building in the immediate vicinity of a forest, in Grefsen, north of Oslo.
I liked being able to experience the total freedom provided by walks in the undergrowth.
It is a place that is both dark and liberating.
Very transgressive.
The power of the imagination is strong here.
We feel it.
However, in the evening, at dinner time, you come home as if nothing had happened and you don't say anything to your parents...
"
At the end of the anguish
The director of this successful film, highlighting the enchantment of childhood in all that it has of magic and worry, confides that he was inspired by his own memories.
"Childhood fears and cruelty fascinate me
," he admits with a smile.
I believe that my greatest fears date back to my childhood.
In particular, I have the memory of having fired for fun with a pellet gun at a seagull which flew in the sky during the holidays.
I'm sure I hurt that bird in mid-flight.
I never told my parents about it.
But I remain convinced that this seagull died by my fault.
It worked for me for a long time.
That's also what my film is about: I wanted to show children with real powers, too young to deal with the consequences that entails, because they lack moral bearings.
Anger, the impulses of destruction, the rejection of the other because he is different… All this is present in us… But where adults distinguish between good and evil, for children, all of this is still very vague.
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The autism of Anna, Ida's big sister, is also at the center of this black fable in the form of an odyssey at the end of anguish.
“Very early the idea came to me to create such a character,
underlines the scenario writer.
I was deeply touched by my meeting with the novelist Olaug Nilssen, who wrote about regressive autism in her books.
I, who became a father, found that to be the true horror film…
”