Miss Flicks

Jasmin Gordon on directing Ophelia Kolb & three kids in The Courageous

After making shorts and documentaries over the past 20 years, Jasmin Gordon has made her first narrative feature with The Courageous.

Set in a small town on the edge of wild country in Switzerland, Gordon’s debut follows a delinquent single mother, Jule (Ophelia Kolb), as she tries to survive in a society that won’t give her a second chance. Fed up with following the rules, she rebels against the system and makes desperate choices in order to raise her kids, Claire (Jasmine Kalisz Saurer), Sami (Arthur Devaux) and Loïc (Paul Besnier). 

Gordon and her co-writer Julien Bouissoux spent five years working on the project, from the initial idea to its 2024 premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and shot the film in seven weeks in Switzerland.

Find out more about her filmmaking process, how she cast her lead, and what she makes of the response to Jule in our following conversation:

I really loved how the script slowly revealed things about Jule’s past, but it stopped short of telling us everything. Why did you and your co-writer take this approach?
I think that we are really interested in sort of telling stories (where) the things that you see are as important as what you don’t see, or what you tell are as important as what you don’t tell. Creating mystery in that way, with how much information do we give? This idea of dropping the audience in the middle of this life, this world, and to not really understand where you are, where you’re going, where you’ve been, sort of figuring it out along the way, and also, leave the cinemas with maybe questions and different ideas so that it remains active in your mind. Not everything is sort of tied together at the end and simple.

I was so impressed by Jasmine, who plays Claire. She was smart, grown-up and she just sees through her mum’s lies. How did you find this young actress, and what was the casting process like overall for the children?
So we saw something like 100 children, and we were really looking for these special kids that had certain qualities that the characters had. It wasn’t really important to us whether they had experience or not. We were looking for these rough diamonds, and Jasmine is amazing. I don’t even know, I can’t explain why she’s a child that has so much depth, and you just feel that.

I did a lot of research and we sort of decided on a method that has a sort of documentary quality, that really allowed things to unfold and she was perfect for that process. I really feel like she was able to connect in a very real and authentic way to these moments. I think because of her depth, she brought a lot of these emotions with her. She’s a very powerful actress.

Yes, definitely, I’d like to see her in more things later on. With Ophelia, did she do any rehearsal or bonding exercises with the kids before filming began?
We did bonding in the sense that we met several times and did sort of fun things together. We just spend time together, I guess. That’s what we did mostly. We had no rehearsals with Ophelia and the kids in advance. Everything was very fresh and in the moment.

Ophelia is extraordinary. It’s such a complex, deep role; how she’s one person for the kids and another person in private. How did she get the role? How did she come to be part of the project?
So I knew that this character would be not an easy character to sort of sell to audiences, and I needed to find someone who brought a lot of warmth to the role so that we would have empathy for her. Ophelia was one of the first people that I thought of, also. I really respect her work. In France, she’s quite well known. She really has something very luminous about her. Something that you just fall in love with her. She was the first person that I invited to the casting session and also the last person because she was so completely this character. There was no need for me to look anywhere else. She’s a lovely woman and I told her that I want to work with her in every film or anything that I do. If it’s not the main role, then a side role because we really connected in a very deep way.

How did you adjust your directing style for the children? And how did it differ from Ophelia to the children?
I think it was similar, in a way. The way that we prepared the children was different but I think that I have a tendency… I guess my documentary background, there’s a lot of observation. I feel like I really respect what people bring, and I’m interested in what they bring, so there’s a lot of space for unexpected things to happen. I don’t feel like there was a big difference between the way I approached the kids or the main character.

How do you feel your documentary background affected your directing style or your approach to narrative fiction filmmaking?
I think there’s so many ways it affects it. I mean, I’m really obsessed with the realism of things, in acting and in many other… everything, basically. It affects the way that I think about how we work on set, the fact that I prefer smaller crews, the fact that I like having a flatter hierarchy. All of these things come from documentary filmmaking, and I’m very very grateful for that background. I feel like it brings something different to the way that I make fiction films.

Do you see yourself going in between documentary and fiction now or are you fiction-focused?
I am more fiction-focused but I would totally make a documentary if an idea comes to me. If there’s a need to make a documentary. I love that form, but right now, it’s mostly fiction things that are coming my way.

What did the initial idea that you started working with look like?
I think the initial idea was sort of the beginning scene where the kids are left behind in a café and the mum disappears. But the story then was more about the kids and how did they make their way home, and it sort of developed over time to be more of a story about a family.

What were the biggest challenges during the production?
I think everything was challenging. We were shooting in the middle of a heatwave with three little kids. And we were working with a crew from different regions of Switzerland with different languages and different cultures. I think everything was difficult, but that also makes it sometimes… I mean there’s a lot of beauty that comes out of difficulty. So I feel like the difficulty sort of also brought people together and there was a lot of passionate filmmaking. I feel like it’s also positive sometimes to go through hard things; sometimes the result is better because of it.

Audiences can be very quick to judge women, particularly mothers. How have you found the response to Jule in general? And do you find yourself defending her from people who criticise her?
I have to say that generally it’s been very positive. But there always also are people who are not happy, and it’s interesting that it really has to do with this character, just as you say, she’s a very complex female character, especially as a mother, it really pushes a lot of buttons. I definitely had to defend her many times. Ophelia, also, we both were defending the character because people come with a lot of baggage about their past or their idea of what women and mothers should be like and so she’s very provocative, this character sort of pushes the boundaries and it’s completely normal that some people are not going to be happy with it. But I really was very pleasantly surprised to see that there were so many people who connected very deeply with this character and this story. People all over the world, sort of cross cultures and languages, and that really is very moving to me. I’m not at all saying it’s because I did an amazing job or anything. It’s just something that happens sometimes when you create something that has a universal quality. It’s a really wonderful feeling to know that it also resonates with other people.

Lastly, what do you have coming up next?
I’m working on my next feature, but I’m in the writing process right now. (It’s) about a woman in her fifties who decides to start living her life past her expiration date, according to society.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The Courageous will be released in UK & Irish cinemas from Friday 5th September. Read my review here.