Fleur Fortuné is a French film director and screenwriter, best known for directing music videos and being the creative director for international artists such as Travis Scott, Drake, M83, Skrillex, Likke Li, Movement, Connan Mockasin. She is a multi-award winning director at UKMVA, D&AD.
Video Interview of Fleur Fortuné
For Travis Scott she also directed a short film set in Detroit.
The Assessment
In 2024 Fleur Fortuné debuted her first feature film, “The Assessment”:
the future is marked by climate change and the government’s tight control over resources. As part of this, and to ensure that the world does not become overpopulated, decide who can and cannot have children through a week-long assessment.
Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) live in a quiet, isolated house with everything they need to do their work: Aaryan has a practice for his genetic research, while Mia runs a greenhouse as a botanical scientist. The two are assigned an evaluator named Virginia (Alicia Vikander), who will test them on all kinds of things. As the tests become more abstract and baffling, nothing seems so obvious anymore.
This sci-fi thriller was presented in the “Special Presentation” category at Toronto where it got the attention of Amazon Prime Video.
More recently it was presented at the Zurich Film Festival, where Alicia Vikander, was awarded the “Golden Eye Award”.
On March 21st it will be released in theaters in the United States, distributed by Magnolia Pictures.
The Interwiev
Below the Fleur Fortuné interview, conducted in person during the London Film Festival by Elisa Rossetto:
E-You have addressed many very critical topics in the film, such as climate change and government control over having children. What was your intention when you made this film?-
F- I think that at the beginning I was very attached to the story of the couple evaluated by Virginia since for years my husband and I tried to conceive without success, and from the tests it didn’t make any sense. Then many themes came out from there in a very interesting way such as having to make decisions when something doesn’t make sense to us.
E-It is actually your first feature film and I know that you have a lot of experience with music videos. How did you try to unite them?-
F- I think it is a very different way of thinking, because music videos are all about the vision and the concept. This film was the result of years of development, characters that delve deeply into emotion and meaning. The format is so free that you are allowed to create and think outside the box.
E-As I said you deal with different themes in this film, do you think that having children nowadays is not very easy when you think about climate change and what it will bring to the future?-
F- Yes, of course, because I was involved in that process myself. When you have children you don’t ask yourself these questions of course, but then when you try and it doesn’t work you ask yourself “Why do I really want this and what does it mean for me but also for the world”.
You know, what we did with this theme as a female director was sometimes difficult. I didn’t want to say to a woman “ok you should have children, fight for this, this was my decision” and I think we shouldn’t tell a woman to think or do it.
But I think it’s important to raise all these questions, to understand the struggles that we face today in our world.
E- I was in Zurich last week, so I had the pleasure of watching “The Assessment” twice. My question is more in-depth of the movie itself:
the film begins with a breath and ends with a breath. The first is “eager to survive”, the second is more hopeful because of everything Mia has been through. What do you think?
F- I’m so glad you noticed. When I spoke to Elizabeth Olsen I said, “Your character has been through a lot and is finally free after feeling oppressed in a world that is still very contained. She needs to breathe.”
It was very important, as was the initial breathing: it also relates to trauma, loss and many other things, so for me it was important that throughout the film you could feel that breathing that from almost suffocating, at the beginning, turns into almost a liberation, at the end
E- How important was it to create a strong dynamic for the four of you from the beginning of the film (Alicia, Elizabeth, Himesh and Fleur)?
F- It was very important for me, especially between Himesh and Lizzie because they needed to make it look like they were a married couple for years. We talked a little bit beforehand with both of them and then when we got to Tenerife we shot the exterior.