“It’s a film about my hometown and childhood”: Louise Courvoisier on Holy Cow
French filmmaker Louise Courvoisier, for her feature debut, presents a coming-of-age story about a young boy, 18-year-old Totone, who participates in a cheese-making competition. Why? He has to secure the money for himself and his little sister. The Upcoming sat down with the director during Cannes 2024 to discuss Holy Cow’s premise and Courvoisier’s work with non-professional actors.
What was the main inspiration behind the premise of Holy Cow?
It was important for me to talk about the region I come from. After going to Paris and Lyon to make a career, I came back to my hometown to make a film about those who stayed behind. This was the beginning of the idea, and then I understood that it had to be something more than only a homage. This is when I realised that the cheese-making premise is actually an interesting subject! It’s not a typical topic for a young female filmmaker, but I felt like this is something I want to do: a real adventure for the audience and all those who worked with us or were depicted in our small film.
How did you find your actors?
I desired to cast actual people from this region, with accents and the experience of living there. Our casting lasted a year and, after meeting hundreds of people, we finally chose some of them, including our main hero. It took a while because we just had to be sure. Later, we needed some time to get to know each other. In a way, I’ve had to adapt to every actor, as they weren’t professional. We even focused on the way they were supposed to talk, so it would echo the accent and the actual language of those people. Subsequently, they were also learning everything about filmmaking: how to react, where to look or when to start performing.
What was your approach?
I didn’t have any method of how to work with them: I adapted and spoke to my actors individually, so we could find a common language. Thanks to this, I immediately felt closer to each of them. It is also worth mentioning that they had their agricultural jobs, so we had to adjust to their schedules, not the other way around. This is why it took us so long to finish Holy Cow. Regardless, I wanted them to feel comfortable, so it wasn’t a classical way of shooting a film.
Were you anxious about this topic? Cheese-making doesn’t sound really compelling on paper.
There aren’t many films on that, so a lot of people were asking me: “Are you sure you want to do that?” But, I wanted them to believe in this project. Getting grants for this film wasn’t easy: to get funding in France, you need celebrities, and we didn’t have any of them. To get funding, I needed to try various strategies for pitching the same idea. At least all of them adored the fact that this is a love story. Besides, I didn’t know how I was gonna film it, and even my cinematographer lost faith in me, but we managed to find a way to make this filming look both organic and, to some extent, quite sexy! It’s very physical to make cheese, so we also focused on our actors’ bodies, so we could make it even more tangible for our viewers. We even had a goal to handle the sexual scenes differently; we aimed to show how young people find themselves in such situations. You might not know it, but the Jura region is a very different place from other provinces in France. Even when our heroes try to show that they care about each other, they don’t say “I love you”. Their language has its own vocabulary.
There is also a theme of provincial alcoholism that can be seen (or heard about) in Holy Cow.
It’s a common problem in my region, so I felt it also should be a substantial part of my debut film. When I was younger, there were a lot of people around me dying because of alcohol (for instance, through accidents). Only later did I learn that in other regions, it isn’t that common to lose someone close to you because of this addiction. I felt that I had to talk about this in Holy Cow. I knew how to portray this issue because I grew up with it. I’ve experienced many difficult moments and feel that they can be somewhat echoed in our film. That was one of my main goals.
Jan Tracz
Holy Cow is released nationwide on 11th April 2025.
Watch the trailer for Holy Cow here:
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