MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI

Director's Statement

I wanted to adapt Gilles Paris’ book because I wanted to make a film about children that addresses ill-treatment of children and remedies for abuse in today’s world; an entertaining film that makes you laugh and cry, but especially a firmly committed film that happens in the here and now and tells you about the strength of resilience amongst a group of friends, advocating empathy, comradery, sharing and tolerance. In contemporary cinema, orphanages are classically depicted as places of abuse, and the outside world as that of freedom (THE 400 BLOWS, THE CHORUS). In MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI, the pattern has been reversed: abuse is suffered in the outside world and the orphanage is a place fostering appeasement and reconstruction. This is what makes this narrative at once classic and modern. After some time immersed in a foster care centre, I realised the importance of treating the theme of adoption with great care, because it is at the heart of the relationship that these children, lacking in affection, maintain with the adult world. I presented adoption in two of its modern manifestations: the foster family and custody by a family member. Depending upon the child’s age and the motivation of the adults, adoption in this instance represents either the risk of returning to the destructive cycle of abuse or as the possibility of reconciling themselves with the world. It also seemed particularly important to enhance the image of the blended family in our society, where today the basic structure of the family is present in multiple forms.