Anthony Giacchino, director: When we first met Colette in the fall of 2019 one of the first things she told us was: ‘When it’s your turn to live through a war, you’ll see you don’t have time to feel anything.’ It was quite an introduction. Alice Doyard, the film’s creative producer, and I were in France scouting a completely different second world war story about an American veteran whose glider had crashed in Sainte-Mère-Église during the Normandy invasion. Over lunch, our tour guide told us he knew a woman in Normandy named Colette who had been in the French resistance and he offered to make an introduction.
Alice Doyard, producer: When we interviewed Colette for the first time, we were all in awe of her strong mind and her vivid memories of the war. She spoke about her lost brother, Jean-Pierre, with a truthful yet very tender tone. Colette was a resistance fighter during the war but in fact became a fighter all her life. Here was a complex, brave, fiercely truth-telling woman. We knew she deserved more than an interview. We had to tell the world what she was communicating.
Anthony Giacchino: She had so much to share about the war. I learned that only 1% of the French population had actively resisted the Nazi occupation before the Normandy invasion and Colette, as a young girl, was one of those resisters. That really stuck with me, and how the courage to resist is never the easy choice.
I was particularly interested in her immediate family, as they all played their part in the resistance. Colette’s 17-year-old brother, Jean-Pierre, was captured by the Gestapo and died a gruesome death in a German forced labour camp. Seven full decades beyond the events of Colette’s youth, the war’s aftermath remains as a dramatic, living thing to filmically explore.
Alice Doyard: With Colette, we had long conversations about what it would mean for her to retrace her brother’s journey during the second world war and visit what remained of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where he died. I approached her with the experience of my own family: in 1943, my grandmother Elisabeth, with four children already, was delivering my mother in a house near Paris; in the next-door room my grandparents were hiding a Jewish family. The family was saved and are our friends to this day.
Over six months the bond of trust grew. It was clear that Colette had never had the chance to make peace with this past – in particular, the death of her brother and what it did to her family. Could a film on her pilgrimage to Dora help healing?
Anthony Giacchino: As we continued to learn about Jean-Pierre’s story, Alice also discovered that a project to document the experience of French deportees to Dora was under way at La Coupole museum near Saint Omer in France. That’s where we found a 17-year-old aspiring historian named Lucie Fouble. She was the same age as Jean-Pierre was when the Gestapo stepped into his classroom and arrested him for resisting the Nazi occupation. It occurred to us that Lucie’s presence would be invaluable from the point of view of Colette being able to see that this tragedy mattered to future generations. Lucie’s entrance on the scene was ultimately what persuaded Colette to make the journey.
Alice Doyard: With Anthony, we had a lot of conversations about how to approach the filming process with extreme care, knowing that it was going to be – in Colette’s words – a “difficult pilgrimage”.
Anthony Giacchino: Upon hearing about the Oscar-nomination on 15 March, Colette told the crew that because of the global stage the film had found, “Jean-Pierre is no longer lost in the night and fog of Dora”. Knowing that we have helped his memory live on, and for Colette to have found some resolve from his loss, has been among the most rewarding parts of making this film.
Alice Doyard: This film is about women and the price of courage. In these challenging times it reminds us that to face threats to all of humanity we need a collective response. Colette and Lucie, women of different generations, evoke lessons that resonate powerfully today. Colette fought evil when many had given up hope. We must listen to her.
Charlie Phillips, executive producer, the Guardian: Anthony sent Colette to myself, Lindsay Poulton and Jess Gormley to see if it would work for our documentary strand, and we were all immediately enchanted by it. I’m Jewish, so it felt really personal, and I sat in my living room crying and thinking about all those who’d died in Nazi camps, and the bravery of those who’d tried to resist.
I also felt like it distinguished itself from a lot of other documentaries about the second world war by being as much about now as the past, which lifted it above other wartime documentaries for me. In this film Colette and Lucie fully represent a modern day reckoning with the lessons of resistance and trauma, and I felt like they’d challenge our audience to think about what they’re doing right now to ensure the horrors that led to Colette’s brother’s death never happen again. It’s also unique to have a war film made about women, and the crew are mostly women too.
In advance of the film’s release on the Guardian, I hosted a Q&A with Colette, Lucie and the film-making team. I was so impressed with Colette’s good humour and wisdom, and she’s great fun to speak to. Colette and Lucie’s friendship across the generations is remarkable. It’s clear the film’s helped Colette to find some peace with her past, and that all the attention she and the film have been getting are amusing to her, but she also sees an opportunity to leave a legacy of more kindness in the world. It’s an honour to help her do that.
Lindsay Poulton, head of documentaries, the Guardian: I think it was Colette’s profound bravery that totally floored me, and the gently inquisitive way that Lucie helped Colette to turn towards the grief. Women’s histories have often been obscured, especially in stories of war, but Colette’s history of resistance and continued resilience is something that needed a powerful platform.
We shared the film with Guardian colleagues and we all worked together to offer various windows into the story – Rafael Behr, columnist and leader writer, wrote an insightful and moving piece when we launched the film on the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials. Guardian Live hosted a conversation with Colette for audiences around the world to participate in. Our film-maker interview with behind the scenes photos offers a glimpse into the creative journey, on location in France and Germany. Colleagues working across our social channels, in marketing and in design, all brought their skills to bear.
The film did resonate very strongly with our global audience. We received many warm and wonderful responses, especially after its mention in our This is Europe newsletter. There were many thanks to the film-makers for making this documentary “for our collective memory, now and in the future”. Others echoed this sentiment: “How wonderful to show two generations, old and young, comforting each other when confronted with sorrow and loss. I wish we had more of that in the world today.” I too want to thank the film-makers for handling the whole film-making process with such kindness.
