Freshly awarded the Audience and Critics' Award at the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival, The Innocents is about to make a thunderous release in French cinemas on February 9. In this disturbing feature film, Norwegian director Eskil Vogt, regular screenwriter of Joachim Trier (Julie in 12 chapters, Thelma) depicts a rather obscure look at childhood and parenthood. Halfway between social drama and film of pure anguish, The Innocents is a worthy representative of the name "elevated horror". We had the chance to meet its author, Eskil Vogt, passing through Paris for the promotion. A city he knows well, since he graduated from Femis in 2004. An interview conducted with Zickma's colleagues, at the Hôtel l'Abbaye, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
In your first film (Blind), you talked about blindness. We have an autistic character here, is it important for you to address this kind of profiles?
I'm not deliberately looking for this specific type of character, but let's just say that it comes naturally to me. What interests me is when there is a gap in perception, a difference in appearance, that the viewer has a preconceived idea. For example, a woman who has lost her sight, we will say "the poor girl, she is a victim", or someone who has a fairly severe autism, "she does not have much autonomy". Then, we discover that the characters have real abilities inside. In cinema, it is often the actions that define the characters, but I believe first of all that it plays on their imagination, their dream, their will to act or not. In my opinion, it is as relevant as American heroes who always know what to do, with very strong actions. It is always rewarding, as a viewer, to change one's perception of a character rather than see him change himself. There is this ingrained idea that over the course of a film, the protagonists understand that they have to change or transcend themselves. I only half believe it. This does not happen "in real life", even if we can go through moments of existential crisis, it remains difficult to change.
"When you're a kid, you have no power. Our parents decide when to eat or sleep, they impose limits on us. There is no way to manifest our will in the world. So, we have this dream of having power, of being a powerful child. It's this feeling that inspires the film."
In your film, we feel moving characters, just like the genres that collide: drama, pure fantasy or horror. What motivated this choice not to remain frozen?
It's a bit of a luxury when you create something. Me, I follow my impulses, my tastes, what interests me and not really the problems of the distributor to sell the film. I love genre, fantasy and horror films, but I also love anything intimate. The Innocents is still a film about childhood, so you have to talk about that first, not necessarily scary things. As I wrote, I thought, "Maybe there's too much drama between the two sisters, it won't work as an anguish movie." My answer to that was that I am interested in that question. There will be spectators who are interested in this mixture. And if some people say it's a pure horror movie, I'd take it as a real compliment because I wanted the film to be scary. 
In this spirit, we feel in the trajectory of one of the children that of Tetsuo in Akira…As a manga reader, was it an inspiration?
Just before Akira, its author Katsuhiro Ōtomo wrote Dômu (published in France under the title Children's Wishes), which is THE reference for this film. It is not at all the same story, but if we know the work of the artist, we can see small tributes. It's true that Tetsuo is part of this trajectory, but I admit I didn't think about it.
At the age these characters are, you would have imagined this adventure, having these powers and using them in this way?
I have a memory that comes back to me from when I was a child. I have this image of a glass on a table and I try to move it with my mental powers, without success. In The Innocents, I wondered why I could have done that. Maybe because when we are children, we have no power. Our parents decide when to eat or sleep, they impose limits on us. There is no way to manifest our will in the world. So, we have this dream of having power, of being a powerful child. It is this feeling that inspires the film.
"Children discover the world with their fingers, more than with their eyes. I see it with mine, they always want to touch. We said with the cinematographer that we had to capture that"
In addition to the talk about childhood, you talk about parenting issues. As a parent, what introspection do you do through the characters of parents in the film?
In writing parents, I had a constraint, which was that they only had to do things that I could have done or that I already do as a father. Their way of ignoring children a little, of making fun of them slightly, with little dialogues like: "Oh yes, he made magic your friend". They talk to them but without believing them. There is this way of being there without being there. Even the least "sympathetic" mother, who makes gestures that I could never have done, has a way of getting annoyed that I understand when you ask your child the same question 10 times without him flinching. After a while, you fart a little, while controlling yourself. I wanted to stay on the children's side, while observing myself with their eyes and trying to do some kind of introspection. To remember what it's like to be a child in front of your parents. In the film, the sisters want to go out at night, around 9pm. And I would have reacted like the parents: "You're crazy, did you see the time? ». I wanted to show a scene where the spectator thinks that they have to come out, against all logic. In addition, we understand that the apartment is also a prison. When the parents don't want you to go out, you stay at home, like in a cell. Parents are unfair through negligence, because it's hard to be. 
In The Innocents, we feel a work on textures. Wood, water, bodies. Sound takes an important place in the staging. How do we manage to disturb with these details?
It was very important to create this sensuality, this sensoriality. Children discover the world with their fingers, more than with their eyes. I see it with mine, they always want to touch. We said with the cinematographer (Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, already at work on Thomas Vinterberg's Drunk or Sébastien Schipper's Victoria , editor's note) that we had to capture that. Hands that touch things, it becomes more sensual, we remember how we perceive the world at this age. There are images that come back like scratching a crust of skin and even eating it, it triggers things, it refers to emotions anchored in each of us.
It is never filmed negatively or to scare. On the contrary, there is a contrast between the disturbing act and the almost sunlight in these moments…
The whole objective was to film in the same way these small intimate acts and passages with special effects, magical elements. That we feel the textures even in the effects. It's something more effective and interesting for the characters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meVHWC9VbzA
