Xavier Giannoli

Best friend of poet Alicia Gallienne.

[press conference for Der Retter (2009) at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival] At the beginning I saw a little incident which was worth three or four lines in a newspaper and then we investigated this, I met the investigating magistrate for example, who enabled me to encounter the con man who was behind all this, and then we went on with our investigation and I put together a whole lot of material which was interesting both from the human point of view and from the technical point of view as well. I wanted to go beyond this simple anecdote, this simple piece of news - I wanted to create a genuine fiction, so I wrote first of all without thinking about the possible duration of the film; I was thinking simply about the human necessity, what had to be told so that this could come alive and be a strong story. And then after a while I realised that the film would indeed be long because the screenplay itself was long. So what happens then of course is you raise the economic question, the commercial question - a two-and-a-half hour film - even though there are quite a few long films here in Cannes this year - is it worth it? Do we take the risk? It is a risk - it's an enormous risk. Obviously it means that the film will have to be very good - a two-and-a-half hour film has to be a good film. The film must maintain the intensity which is necessary for that duration. If there are quite a few long films in Cannes this year, it's also perhaps a reaction today - people are talking about economic factors, the economic crisis, economic pressure, and making a long film today is an act of liberty, enabling people to forget this length of time but also striking a blow for freedom, and I said to myself, "Well, this is what I must do, I shall have to convince people."