• You write and you direct documentaries. Once you have chosen a subject, what is it that leads you to the decision “I’m going to make a film”, or, conversely “I’m going to write”? Why did you write, and not film, Le Jour où mon père s'est tu?

In fact, the story is quite funny. I thought about doing a film based on this story, simply because, as you mentioned, I am a director, the image is the medium I am most familiar with. I wrote a draft which was more or less the book, and I never managed to sell it to an analog channel! One day, I met Patrick Rotman, who I had worked with for a long time on documentaries, and told him of my disappointment that I couldn’t interest anyone in the project. I told him that, to compensate, I was writing. He asked me to post him some pages, he is also a publisher, at Le Seuil. The next day he called me to suggest that I sign a contract: he published me! So I launched myself. And finally, there is something just in choosing writing -rather than anything else - as the medium to talk about my father who is a writer who I greatly admire. And as I am very stubborn, I filmed at the same time the interviews which I had directed, telling myself that if one day I could interest a channel...That was finally the case, the film, very different from the book, has just been broadcast on “Planète” under the title of “68, my parents and I” and has received very good reviews in the French press.

•  You take the role of cross-examining “the children of the 68ards”. Do you think that, as we have heard so much from their parents, it’s time to let their children speak?

I wouldn't say it quite like that. The role of interviewing the children came from a very simple realisation. 68 was of course our parents’ time, they have talked a lot about it, they often explain themselves, and it’s true that the 40th anniversary was a sort of apocalypse in the commemoration. The 40 years coincides with our 40 years, us, the children of 68. 40 is the age of maturity, we are finally real adults, we have built, in part, our personal, romantic, professional and familial lives, and we can look back in the rear-view mirror. In this mirror, we see our childhood: we are the children of 68, we are born from, and by this story. It seemed important to me that for our 40th we should finally speak of what 68 was for us, and what it means for us today.

• Has this project been in the pipe-line for a long-time, or was it the commemorations of May 68 that made you want to write it?

In fact, as I mentioned, I thought that a film on this generation seemed more suitable. That wasn’t the opinion of the people at the channels...Then, it was my publisher who suggested that the book should come out as part of the commemorations. This really scared me, I thought it would be swallowed up the multitude. By chance, it was noted, firstly the media really gave it a chance, then the readers, if I judge by the amount of mail I received daily. It's also the kind of book which benefits from word-of-mouth, I constantly met people who told me that they had loved it and passed  it on to someone else, to provoke a discussion that goes beyond 68 and raises questions of communication and relationships.

• How did the 68ards welcome the work?

That all depends on which 68ards you are referring to! Often the parents of the children who were interviewed in the book have grimaced. This seemed normal to me, and the opposite would have worried me: it's rare that the parents version coincides with the children's memories, it's understandable, and what seems to me essential is that the two versions can exist and serve as a springboard for discussions between the generations. And I know that the book has allowed this kind of interaction. With regards to the 68ards in general, a lot of them have written to me to tell me they are going to give the book to their grown-up children...

• You say that your investigation was not “exhaustive or a sociological study”. Would you like to write a sociological study?

No, I absolutely don't want to undertake that kind of investigation. My relationship with this story is too intimate to want to transform it in a study. I leave that to more objective researchers!

• In reading the book, we have the impression that the 68ards make up lost time with their grand-children, that they give them all the attention that could have been lacking for your generation. Do you sympathize with the diagnosis of “sacrificed generation” to describe the children of the 68ards?

No, I don't like the definitive statements, the quick short-cuts, the total formulas. We are not a sacrificed generation, we are children who were raised in another time, a time where, for our parents in any case, the priority was politics and the revolution. That does not mean a lack of love on their part, of course they loved us, but the priority was elsewhere. Although children want all the  attention, that was not not our case. Writing this book allowed me to meet other adults who have had a similar childhood, which has reinforced this for me, and I believe for them also. We always like to discover that, besides the particularities, there exists a common thread !

London, July 2008