June 2022, the wonderful chateau of Yvelines in the middle of a wooded park. At the foot of the stone steps, film technicians in jackets with pockets and radios in hand are busy. On the gravel path, children come with a slightly limping gait in hooves and hoofs. They are accompanied by parents, sometimes grandparents or a specialized educator. The entire film crew is also smiling new woman Léa Todorov’s first film, which opens in theaters on March 13, welcomes them by its first name.
There are Alice and Baptiste, twins suffering from cerebral palsy. Alvin, a large, moon-like teenager who tends to run away and steal notebooks. And then Matteo, who sums it up stoically: “To make a movie, you wait and then do what you’re told. » There is also Sofie, 6 years old, the director’s daughter, with colored glasses and her big smile. He was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease at birth. His mother, a documentary director, is shooting her first feature film here.
The film follows the early years of the career of the Italian doctor and teacher Maria Montessori (1870-1952). PUSH “method” to which she gave her name and which is now used in kindergartens and primary schools around the world, was first developed in Rome as part of her work with the little “nerds”, as they were then called. These neuroatypical children, who exhibit psychomotor and developmental disorders of varying severity, are the core of the film project. It offers a setting for their poetic singularities, their destroyed bodies, their somewhat floating gazes.
Montessori method used during filming
It was during Léa Todorov’s stay “done”, she says that her film could not exist without the participation of children with disabilities. She then met around twenty, through associations and advertisements placed on parents’ networks. “At that moment we realized that we were able to establish a very strong bond with children who sometimes have significant difficulties and who were always excluded in the end.” she says.
Rafaëlle Sonneville-Caby, who on screen plays Tina, the daughter of a Parisian woman (Leïla Bekhti), placed in a boarding school under the care of Marie Montessori (Jasmine Trinca), is spotted. Her mother Fabienne says she was immediately seduced by the director’s approach: “From the first meeting with other parents on Zoom, Léa talked about wanting to work with these children, whose profiles deviate from the usual conventions, to reveal them, to legitimize them, to see what they can offer… For those of us who live in fear of discriminatory comments and behavior towards our daughter, she was like a UFO. We know our kids, we know they have resources, but it gets so little response in society. Lending them skills and ambition before we even knew them… We couldn’t believe it. »
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