En
Fr
A director sees the shooting of his film canceled and goes in search of what remains of it, elsewhere, with another actor. What they are looking for together is no longer just a film, but a reflection on the stories that are forbidden and those that we reappropriate. Through their exchanges, the boundary between cinema and life disappears and the film becomes a space of intimate resistance, where thinking, desiring, and speaking are one and the same.
How did this movie come about ?
Eva Sehet : In fact, there were two Taxi Moto projects ! I met Gaël Kamilindi in 2022 as he hired me to shoot a documentary in Rwanda about his deceased mother (Didy, a feature film co-directed with François Xavier Destors, which will be released on April 2026, after a long run at festivals). We’ve kept in touch since then and talk regularly, with Gaël telling me about his projects. So I was able to follow the development, from the very first versions, of this first short fiction. Something he wanted to shoot again in Kigali...
With the financing well underway for a shoot scheduled for the summer of 2025, we traveled there in February to finalize the location scouting. It was on this occasion that we met the Rwandan team that would be accompanying us and that we prepared the schedule together. Everything then fell into place, with filming to take place in early August. It was a relatively complex organization for a short film, especially with all the customs formalities involved in sending the equipment from Paris... And then, just when everything was done, the full camera package tested at Panavision and ready for shipping, the news broke : the filming permits had been revoked !
The film was suddenly off !
It was very hard for Gaël, who had been preparing for over a year and had managed to fit everything into his very tight schedule as a stage perfomer for the Comédie Française... A decision had to be made very quickly. Either abandon everything or shoot it anyway. Changing the script and adapting it to Paris. There were about two weeks left before filming began, and we embarked on this slightly mad thing...
What remains of the original project ?
ES : Only the love story between the two boys. It was really exhilarating to take on such a challenge : rethinking an entire film in form, locations, and interpretation... With a strange feeling of immense freedom despite the constraints of a very limited budget and time.
With firts AD Carla Hennequart, and continuity boy Lucas Gloppe, we formed a very close core team around Gaël, who was reinventing his film on a daily basis. The mission was to write, prepare, and shoot in a row before Gaël was no longer available...
The script was therefore constructed as locations were scouted and sets confirmed, in a series of back-and-forth between us that was truly exciting.
I guess that’s where the autofiction start point came from. With a director who finds himself faced with the relocation of his project and his encounter with a new actor...
There are still links with Rwanda, like those few shots...
ES : Yes indeed... Gaël wanted to maintain a symbolic link with his country of origin. As we had shot the previous documentary together on location, we were able to draw on some of the rushes and integrate them into the short film. I’m thinking in particular of those nighttime visions of Kigali where silhouettes are outlined in the headlights, as well as shots taken during a violent storm. Images where we tried to de-realize the rain, which became as sharp as razor blades. These were quite abstract clips that I had really loved filming at the time. But which did not made it in the final cut. As a matter of fact, Gaël had already reused these images as visual support to raise money for his short film project during a pitch session at the Côté Court Festival in Pantin.
These rain shots were very useful in the sequence where our protagonists dance in a nightclub, as Gaël wanted to play on the shift from a very bare set against a black background to Rwanda and this tropical stormy night. To achieve this, I changed the lighting in this scene : we started with sweeping beams on the characters at a relatively slow pace, then gradually increase the frequency until we end up with a stroboscopic effect. It became so fast some images are even not affected. Those blackouts allowed us to add the rain as an overlay during editing, leaving it to chance whether or not the flashes captured the faces. There are few colors in this scene, however, because we wanted to keep it very conceptual, with only these two characters against a black background. We were able to test the strobe frequency during camera tests, but it was only when the rushes were developed that we could judge the result.
And you’re also shooting the film on celluloid !
ES : That was the first thing Gaël asked me when he found out we wouldn’t be shooting in Rwanda. Although he is very attached to film, the original project was to be shot digitally because of the many night scenes and the logistical difficulties involved in processing the film. I understood that for his new project, he had this very strong desire to use film, as a kind of cinematic consolation in the face of the adversities encountered. And today, film essentially carries the question of nostalgia, which echoed what we had just experienced : a fantasized, thought-out film, ready to shoot, that could never see the light of day.
So he incorporated this new medium into his script, with, for example, the scene where he burns the film in his apartment... Things suddenly fed off each other. I think it was also a way for him to fundamentally assert his desire for cinema, through its most noble medium. Even if he was prevented from shooting in Rwanda.
For a first short film directed and performed by the same person, isn’t that still a big challenge ?
ES : Yes, As the lead role, he knew he wouldn’t be able to review the takes. But paradoxically, freeing yourself from live control also means more freedom... You have to trust the team and learn to let go. Looking back, I think this choice saved the film. We were caught up in a frenzy of preparation, and shooting on film brought many aspects into focus : our collective concentration, the trust that each department had to place in the others, but also an economy of takes. We got so caught up in the game that we saved two rolls at the end of filming out of the 25 that had been planned (a ratio of about 1 to 13 for the 20 minutes of film in the final edit). As the emulsion choice, I shot mostly in 250D, reserving a few scenes for 500T, including the day for night forest scene, shot without 85 filter to obtain a material and tone that was already very blue on the negative.
Tell me about this day for night sequence, which suddenly shifts the film into a more dreamlike atmosphere...
ES : The shooting of this sequence deserves a little anecdote. Constrained by the availability of the various interiors (notably the Flèche d’Or café for the bar and nightclub and the tropical greenhouse we found in a private place ), we had to start shooting with this day for night part. During our two weeks of preparation, we had scouted a location in Fontainebleau forest, on a site with rocks forming a cavity into which our two characters were to rush. But pressed for time, we had not been able to obtain the proper authorizations from the Office National des Forêts , which rules the place. So, with a reduced crew for this first day of filming on location, after an hour we saw the forest rangers arrive and ask us to pack up because we didn’t have the proper authorization. It was really as if this film just didn’t want to happen ! Fortunately, they were understanding and suggested we explore a nearby village... Where a municipal wood might be able to help us out. A quick trip there and back allowed us to negotiate a permit with the deputy mayor.
For me, it was dizzying. I had meticulously prepared each camera angle according to the sun’s position in the original location, favoring angles where it didn’t shine directly but filtered through the foliage. Now I had to rethink everything in a very limited amount of time and blindly adjust the aperture for the Steadicam shots !
I didn’t sleep very well the night before receiving the daylies !
The ending sequence of the film, which includes partially fogged shots, comes across as a very strong visual statement. A kind of declaration of love for argentic movie-making, right ?
ES : Well, that’s one of the unexpected things you can encounter with film ! In fact, a reel was actually accidentally fogged on the penultimate day of shooting. We discovered it when we saw the daylies... and it happened to be on this rather iconic shot, among others. But it wasn’t the only shot ; the entire reel was affected. Current digital post-production tools allowed us to almost restore the image and erase these solarizations, but Gaël decided to keep it on this final shot, and on the one that reveals the mise en abîme with the reverse tracking shot... Simply because it suddenly made sense in the film, in its message. A very disturbing and surprising accident. Really.
So yes, it’s definitely an aesthetic statement, but also a political one, I think...
For me, this final sequence becomes a manifesto, bringing together both this desire for cinema and Gaël’s very strong desire to make this love story that had been prevented visible.
(Interview by François Reumont for the AFC)
Taxi Moto
Director : Gaël Kamilindi
Director of photography : Eva Sehet, AFC
Sound : Ugo Donias
Editing : Marie Thomas-Penette
Music : Gaspard Sommer
