Our Children
Emilie Dequenne
A few years ago I heard about this news story on the radio about a woman who had killed her own children, and I was rather frightened by the way the media created a monster out of this woman. I talked about it with my wife, with friends, and everybody said it was impossible to imagine – it’s unthinkable. That’s when I saw my co-writers and thought maybe we could do a script that would make it a bit more imaginable, more thinkable.
We weren’t trying to tell the truth about this actual news story or even give it justice through cinema. Cinema is never truth or reality, it’s always an invention, a construction. But what fascinated us was that it was a great tragedy. Like all great tragedies it starts with a passionate love story, and very quickly the way to hell is paved with good intentions. That’s the aspect I was interested in.