Tristan Baille : In « Body of Glass », artistic creation is at times connected with violence, destruction and human contradictions. Was this something that was already on your mind when you were writing the film ?

Naemi Ada : Yes, I thought about it a lot while writing, about the way art can sometimes emerge from violence, destruction or contradiction. We are human beings, and we are made up of very different things, sometimes even opposing things. Nothing is completely pure or perfectly coherent. There can be something strange in the way we live, communicate and behave towards one another, and art is also part of that complexity. For me, making a film is perhaps a way of entering into those contradictions rather than trying to resolve them.

Tristan Baille : The film also touches, at times, on violence against women. How did you want to approach this through your character ?

Naemi Ada : I mainly wanted to try to understand what she feels, what she is going through and how she continues to live with it. What interested me was not only what happens to her, but also what that experience can create inside her. She can appear strong, almost protected by a kind of shell, but behind that there is also fragility. As an artist, I wanted to stay close to that complexity without trying to judge her.

Sometimes we tend to judge characters very quickly, and perhaps women in particular : we wonder whether they are reacting in the right way, whether they are making the right choices, whether they should leave, stay, speak or remain silent. I wanted instead to leave those questions open.

Tristan Baille : You also seem to want to leave a certain degree of uncertainty within the relationships between the characters.

Naemi Ada : Yes, because human relationships can be very complicated. There can be love, fear, desire, violence and confusion, and sometimes several of these things can exist at the same time. Even in a bedroom, in a very intimate space, so many things can happen between two people. I didn’t necessarily want to explain to the audience how they should understand every gesture or every decision. I prefer to show the characters, their behaviour and their contradictions, and allow each person to feel what exists between them. For me, that is more interesting than immediately defining someone as good or bad.

Tristan Baille : Spirituality also seems to be present in the way you approach cinema. Is that something important to you ?

Naemi Ada : Yes. Spirituality, energies, and what we can feel from other people or in certain places are things I’m quite sensitive to. It can be the energy of a person, a room, a space or a landscape. When I make a film, I also try to be attentive to that. Of course there is the screenplay, the characters and the directing, but there can also be something that we cannot completely control or always explain. For me, a film can sometimes feel like a puzzle : you bring together different elements, sensations, people and spaces, and little by little something begins to appear.

Tristan Baille : Does this way of working also allow you to give the audience more freedom ?

Naemi Ada : Yes, I think that is becoming increasingly important to me. I’m gradually trying to let go a little more in my films and not explain everything. I like the idea that the audience can enter the film with their own experiences, their own emotions and their own way of looking at things. Each viewer can discover something slightly different, and that interests me a lot. Cinema can sometimes make you feel an emotion without immediately knowing why you are feeling it. I find that very beautiful. I don’t necessarily want to interrupt or guide that freedom. I would like the audience to be able to believe in the story, but also to question it and experience it in their own way. That is probably one of the things that interests me most about cinema today.

Interview by Tristan Baille with Naemi Ada about Body of Glass, at the San Sebastián International Film Festival.