Synopsis
Between 1994 and 1998, for his fiction films, Emmanuel Finkiel organized a casting of non-professionals from the French Ashkenazi community: "We are looking for Yiddish-speaking men and women between the ages of 65 and 90 for a fiction film. The film Casting is built from these individual interviews and these bits of essays where the lived experience of the people and the fiction of the characters are constantly mixed, between experience and representation.
A word from Tënk
Casting: what is normally a trial by fire, when an actor or actress must prove their ability to embody a role while accommodating the director’s requirements, becomes the site of a strange transaction in Emmanuel Finkiel’s Casting. Rather than playing a role, each protagonist seizes their moment to deliver up a part of their own identity and backstory. This choice meant that what should otherwise have been simple working documents became the raw material for a passionate film about the collection of memory and its transmission. The many faces and words that are shared with us serve to transcend the rudimentary dispositif and mediocre image quality—Casting is a film filled with emotion and intelligence, well worth a rewatch.
Sylvain Bich
Film projectionist
