by Stéphane MANCHEMATIN and Serge STEYER
2023 - 86 min - HD
A coproduction Ana Films/ Les Films de la pluie/ France 3 Grand Est / L'heure D
Development assistance from Région Grand Est
Production assistance from CNC, Régions Bretagne and Grand Est, département des Vosges and from PROCIREP ANGOA
Directors : Stéphane Manchematin & Serge Steyer
Image : Gautier Gumpper, Philippe Viladecas
Sound : Stéphane Manchematin
Additional sounds : Marc Namblard
Editing : Stéphane Manchematin, Serge Steyer
Sound editing and mix : Lionel Thiriet
Calibration : Nicolas Vrignaud
Music : Muckrackers, Membrane
FESTIVALS
Festival Traces de vie 2023 - Jury Hors Frontières award
DokLeipzig 2023 - International competition
SYNOPSIS
“We'll see!”
Suzanne takes life as it comes, with calm and serenity. She lives alone on the farm where she was born in 1930, on the edge of a forest in the Hautes-Vosges. The house has no running water or electricity.
With the changing seasons, Suzanne tends her vegetable garden, prepares her preserves, reads the newspaper, walks in the mountains, and welcomes passing visitors. She savors all of life’s little pleasures with a laugh, enjoying the simple, contented life that her contemporaries aspire to.
There is also a 52-minute version titled Suzanne Through the Seasons
THE DIRECTORS
Stéphane Manchematin has been exploring documentary forms and styles for some thirty years. He has edited, produced, written, and directed documentaries, first for television (Arte, France Télévisions), then for radio (France Culture), and for film. The question of sound is at the heart of his documentary work, which has led him to handle the sound recording for his films himself.
Serge Steyer’s career as a writer and director began in the late 1980s. The thirty or so films he has directed since then, for and with public service broadcasters—France 2, France 3, France 5, Arte—fall into three categories: portraits of artists or intellectuals, issues of local democracy and ecology, and a look at the Vosges and Alsace, his native region.
The two directors have been collaborating for nearly 25 years. Together, they have co-directed three films: Le complexe de la Salamandre, a portrait of the Lorraine artist Patrick Neu, released in theaters in 2014; L’Esprit des lieux, featuring sound recordist Marc Namblard, presented at Cinéma du Réel in 2018, and subsequently selected for some thirty French and international festivals—this film received the 2020 Audiovisual Work Award from SCAM—and Suzanne jour après jour, their third co-directed film, selected for international competition at DokLeipzig as well as at the Traces de Vies festival in 2023.
Former works with avec Ana Films :
L'esprit des lieux, Stéphane Manchematin and Serge Steyer (2018)
Les aventuriers du match perdu, Serge Steyer (2022)
