Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's Jessica Forever, which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on MUBI, is showing from December 4 – January 2, 2019 in MUBI's Debuts series.
We have wanted to write this film to put into image the atmosphere that we felt during our teenage years. We have always felt close to those who sink into cold, inexplicable violence. This frightens and fascinates us in equal measure. To understand that violence is not always gratuitous and isolated but that it arrives at a moment when it isn’t possible to speak anymore, when words are lacking. A violence that is directed against a world which appears in many shapes, cold, excluding, uninhabitable. A violence against a world we do not want to save but to destroy. Of course, to understand does not mean to legitimize. But we have never looked to position ourselves as judges with our films. Our films are made inside the world’s chaos. And in this sense, we are not inventing anything, but we feel, and we attempt to orchestrate these sensations that seize us within a tale.
Our characters are on the run. They are wild and solitary monsters: boys who have committed irreparable acts. They are redeemed killers, convalescent. Their violence is not a political program, it is of no use to them. It is their nature, it is not a choice. It is part of them like a cancer. Jessica’s power is to treat this disease, simply by considering these boys and giving them the love they have never received. She has believed in them, and in their ability to change. It’s through this belief that our film was built. It’s an act of love that we are trying to make. We too we want to believe it is possible to heal.
Jessica Forever is also our first feature. It’s a film that has been within us for a long time. A film which resembles our characters, a monstrous, instinctive, unreasonable, romantic, and extreme film. We hope it resembles us.
It’s as if we invited you to penetrate into our room and that we said:
“Come, let’s look together. These are our dreams, here. And this, these are our nightmares! Here, you can see our beaches, our houses, Our loves, our bombs, and our snacks. Listen to our chants, our screams, our shotguns, The squeaking of our jaws and our daggers, The sunsets enfold our sleepless nights. She, she is our queen, the lighthouse that guides us. And them, they are our monsters.”