Ftraining as a journalist, then author of documentaries engaged with children always at the center (JI’m 12 years old and I’m going to war And Killer Kid protagonist a very young terrorist), Gilles de Maistre who created it in 2018 Mia and the White Lion with which he achieved international success, he definitively stepped over and became the reference director for family films where the relationship between man and nature it comes in different forms and at different latitudes.
His latest film, The son of the desert (in theaters from April 23rd), tells the birth of an unconventional family and the discovery that a fairy tale told by an explorer grandfather was actually a true story. Hadara is two years old and during a sandstorm he escapes his mother’s control and gets lost in the desert. He will meet a couple of ostriches who will take care of him and he will grow together with them.
«It was my wife who discovered the book. I said to myself: “Maybe I’ll make a film about it one day”. It’s such a strong allegory of survival that it cannot fail to speak to each of us, I told myself. The protagonist is a child who is in total communication with natureI believe that what he takes is an important existential journey, even if it is an adventure for families.
A scene from “The Son of the Desert” by Gilles de Maistre.
Gilles de Maistre, father of six children
Why did you move from documentaries on political themes to more popular cinema?
Because at a certain point I understood that when I talk about children dying of hunger, who are exploited, victims of war, you are speaking to an audience that is already on your side: they are all clearly against war and exploitation. It is not secondary that I am the father of six children. I can no longer just show how black the world is, I have a duty to say that we must have hope and that we must protect the world we live in.
He takes on an extreme nature for his stories
The relationship between man and nature is something we must learn from scratch. We come from there, our ancestors come from the deserts, the frozen ones, the forests. In my story I talk about ostriches who saved a little human being. There is a real relationship between them.
A scene from “The Son of the Desert” by Gilles de Maistre.
We were used to the she-wolf for Romulus and Remus and the monkeys for Tarzan. The ostrich is truly new.
I read the book during covid, in 2020. And then and there I told myself that, working with untrained animals myself, it would be impossible. Then on social media I met a Belgian lady who is crazy about ostriches: she saves them, she created a shelter where she takes care of them and enters into a relationship with them. That’s what I do, I work on the relationship. therefore figures like this woman who manage to create a collaboration with animals are indispensable for our work. She offered to train children, to teach them not to be afraid and to feel the energy of animals. Ostriches love to be petted.
Training with puppets
Do you have a proven method with children?
Casting is very important, I work with an extraordinary coach. In the film there are three children who play Hadara at different ages, 2, 6 and 12 years old. The youngest is certainly brilliant, but when we shot he was only 3 years old. The ostrich lady then played with him for a long time with the playmobils, explained the whole film to him thanks to the puppets… He understood and even invented some things while we were filming which turned out to be spot on.
She happened to capture the moment…
It’s the spice of my cinema, because I come from documentaries. We always look for the surprise, the unexpected.
A scene from “The Son of the Desert” by Gilles de Maistre.
Why do you use untrained animals? For ethical reasons or because it works better if they aren’t?
There are only good reasons not to train them, first of all because it is dangerous. Trainers use constraints to obtain results and when you do this there is never any safety. Much better to create a relationship of love than of fear. A relationship that passes through caresses, nourishment, play, time spent together. And then ethics is certainly not secondary. The animals we used were animals that had been discarded and had some “defect”. And the film saved them. At the end of the film they returned to wild life.
Do you also feel like an activist?
I speak to families, to those who already have an awareness of climate change. But I would like to speak to those who care about the environment to try to tell them that we are destroying our source of life and have lost the connection with nature.
The success of Mia and the lion did it bring about a change?
The film aided the process of banning white lion hunting in South Africa. But beyond the laws, what we should change is our mentality.
The next movie?
It’s almost finished and it’s called Mélodie pour un ours. He talks about bear hunting, which is legal in Canada and which produces a lot of orphans.