{"id":14557,"date":"2026-03-22T14:57:57","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T14:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/?p=14557"},"modified":"2026-03-22T15:04:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T15:04:26","slug":"14557","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/?p=14557","title":{"rendered":"Benoit Dervaux on lensing A bras le corps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This years “Chef Op’ en Lumi\u00e8re” festival in Chalon held a screening of the film “\u00c0 bras le corps” (With All My Heart), directed by Swiss filmmaker Marie Elsa Sgualdo and cinematographed by Benoit Dervaux SBC.

The film tells the story of a young Swiss woman in 1943, in the midst of World War II, who tries by all means to emancipate herself and overcome the great trials that the violent and patriarchal world around her can inflict upon her.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2025.

\u2013 How did you meet the director?
BD: Marie Elsa Sgualdo had seen the film “Laissez-moi” (Let Me Be) by Maxime Rappaz. She contacted me, and I read the script, which I really liked.

\u2013 How did the preparation go? How did you discuss the film’s look?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BD: We exchanged quite a few images and discussed the visuals, framing, and the distance from the characters. One of the film’s biggest challenges was creating a period piece with the limited resources we had. Aside from a few anachronisms corrected with VFX, we really tried to recreate the era within the frame by carefully selecting filming locations and angles we could exploit.
We worked very closely with the set designer to try and create an artificial geography. A lot of of the locations had roads nearby, but by restricting the camera angles, we always managed to avoid them. Obviously, we could never shoot in 360\u00b0 outdoors\u2026 This fictional geography of the village was a major undertaking in preparing the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 What were your key references for the film ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BD: There was Dorothea Lange for the social aspect and for the representation of poverty. And for the interiors, we drew from the paintings by Hammersh\u00f8i, a Danish painter from the early 20th century. We liked these rather bright, often desaturated and monochromatic interiors. The relationship between the colors of the walls and the costumes was a real source of inspiration. The painter Andrew Wyeth was also a reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I first work with a director, I exchange images, and paintings too. I explore different avenues so we can find common ground. We watched some films, but also documentaries and even institutional films that follow village life during that period. Also phographs by Seiichi Furuya, a Japanese photographer, and by Richard Birmingham, for example. I really like their use of light, and also the distance from the subject in the image. These are things that resonate with me. Exchanging images also helps with the colors: do we go for vibrant or desaturated colors?

\u2013 The film is reminiscent at times of Audrey Diwan’s film “The Event” or the films of Laura Wandel, which are first-person films.

BD: The film “The Event” was also an inspiration for us because I found the recreation of the period successful, even though we see very little of it. I found it interesting to work on the idea that the viewer could reconstruct the period through what was left unseen. We sometimes tried to include elements in the frame, like a cart, a car, which allowed us to create a richer off-screen space. Outdoors, the setting and what can be seen from that era are not shown much visually, but through sound and backgrounds, the viewer is able to mentally reconstruct it. As in the farmhouse meal sequence, we placed the table under a window with a view of the outside of the farm, where we placed a cart, a horse, and some chickens, visible through a small opening. Even by showing little, the viewer retains this “impression” of the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, in the factory sequences in the second half of the film, where the protagonist works, the space was vast, and we didn’t have the budget for a complete set design. We filled the place with smoke, positioned welders, and had extras using angle grinders to create arcs of light in the background, giving the impression that the factory was running at full capacity. In reality, no machines were operational. It was the deafening sound combined with these lighting effects that created the illusion. By favoring certain camera angles, we managed to recreate a sense of grandeur that didn’t exist.
Outdoors, to avoid anachronistic elements, we filmed in small areas, placing the camera quite low and using longer focal lengths. It must also be said that I like films that develop a strong point of view, with a camera that follows that point of view rather than one that captures everything from a more omniscient perspective. For this film, it seemed obvious from the script that we had to adopt the protagonist’s point of view, and that also helped us a lot to compensate for the limited resources needed to recreate the period. The character is the linchpin, and it’s she who determines the camera choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2013 The film plays on the scarcity of dialogue, on what is left unsaid, the silences, the glances: was that in the script?
BD: She cut a lot of dialogue on set, and I always try to share my feelings about the shot. Sometimes the dialogue and what we see on screen can create an impression of redundancy, of repetition that weighs the film down; this was one of the discussions we had on set.
We spent time scouting locations, ideas for staging and acting, with the script supervisor and the assistant director to find the sequences. I really like scouting with the script and trying to discover a staging with the director on location, already thinking about the shots, the blocking. I don’t like to prep too much on paper in an office, but rather on set. When filming begins and the actors and actresses are there, it allows for a whole series of decisions and choices to be made, and I always try to be open to what is proposed in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 A lot of shots in the film often feel as if filmed on the same focal length ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BD: I prefer more neutral or “normal” focal length ratios; I like 40mm and 50mm, for example,
which, for this kind of filmmaking, give, in my opinion, the right distance ratio to the
character. We also had a zoom lens to film characters moving outdoors, for example,
which allows me to maintain a similar shot size during movement. And I like to combine
the optical zoom movement with a tracking shot or a pan to add dynamism to the shots. I am greatly influenced by films from the 70s that use this type of technique, like Friedkin’s “The French Connection,” for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As for the shot composition, the idea was to have as much depth as possible in the shots and to
offer different framing versions of the same shot. If, for example, a shot ends in a close-up of the actress, I suggested shooting a version where the shot ends in a wider shot to allow the editor to use different perspectives of the same moment. I probably owe this to my experience in documentary filmmaking and my work with the Dardenne brothers. By shooting several variations, it allows you to immerse yourself in the film with an energy that is closer to reality, since the actors’ performances maintain the same energy.
On this film, which was her first, the director also wanted to try several acting styles, and we shot a lot of takes. Sometimes, being behind the camera, you might not see these subtle variations in acting, you might feel like you’re shooting many identical takes, but when you watch the rushes and edit them, these subtleties become apparent, and you’re glad you had the opportunity to shoot several different takes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Did you watch the rushes together?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BD: We didn’t watch the rushes together, but each of us separately, and we discussed them to confirm our direction. Personally, I watch the circled takes in the evening, and I also request stills from the DIT to analyze the overall coherence of the lighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 And in terms of grip equipment, how did you work?
BD: We didn’t shoot much handheld, except for sequences that required it, like with the children or the dance sequence at the end of the film. I used the GFM Turtle a lot, which is a base that can be mounted on tracks of different widths and allows you to move around almost anywhere in a room. I used a slider with it, often at 90\u00b0 to adjust the frame perpendicular to the tracks. And the legacy I’ve kept from the handheld films I shot is that I operate the tracking shots myself. I need that organic connection to the camera. We also used a Ronin 2 with a panbar for remote framing, and we often mounted this Ronin on a large-wheeled dolly built by Basile Duquenne, onto which we attached an EasyRig arm to support the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2013 What Camera equipment did you use?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BD: We shot with an Arri Alexa 35 and Cooke Mini S4s, which had a texture I liked
for this film, and for the zoom shots, we had an Optimo 24-290mm.
The Alexa 35 is so sensitive with so much dynamic range in the highlights that it allows you to work with lower levels and smaller light sources. For daytime scenes, we had an M90 that we mounted on a machine, about 40 meters from the windows. For example at the pastor’s office, which was on the first floor. When I could use natural light, I did, but generally I try to light from outside for a more even, more natural look, then I bring in fill on the inside in different ways by using a low level bounce off the ceiling or by using the walls of the set. I find this technique reinforces the aesthetic coherence of a set. In this case, one must pay close attention to the skin tones. When, for technical, logistical, or budgetary reasons, it is impossible to light from the outside, I recreate daylight in the traditional way from the inside with spotlights (SL, Vortex with grid, etc.) suspended from poles above the windows. When there is no space or time for rigging, another helpful technique involves using spotlights with zoom lenses and shutters (Source Four) to bounce a controlled beam of light onto a small white surface. This technique was particularly useful for recreating daylight in an attic room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For “Young Mothers,” I was able to test Rosco View, a polarized gel that is sandwiched between two sheets of plexiglass cut to the exact size of the set’s windows. With a Rotapola filter in the matte box, this allows you to control the amount of light seen through the windows while maintaining the intensity of the natural light entering the set. I found this device incredible, but Rosco View rolls are so incredibly expensive that they are difficult for productions to buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Were there any sets or sequences that were more difficult than others? In what way?
BD: The rape scene was difficult to shoot; it was a difficult scene to show, to capture visually. We tried to get into the character’s mindset, with this effect of distorted reality. I filmed some shots with a tilt-shift lens and a stills camera. Many questions arose about how to convey the male character’s premeditation. The other question that occupied us was how to convey the long ellipsis between the moment the character becomes pregnant and the moment the baby arrives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2013 How do you work with color grading and on set? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this film, there was a DIT who had worked on a LUT before filming began. This LUT emulated a Portra film stock, intended to soften the harshness of the digital colors while maintaining a certain level of contrast. This LUT was adjusted daily on the rushes to ensure visual consistency in the final edit.
During color grading, using the REVEAL Arri color space, Chiara Pontuali, the colorist, started from scratch (from Log C4) while preserving the look we had envisioned with this LUT. Due to budgetary constraints, we graded the film in eight days. Even though we lacked a day and a half needed to step back and refine the final touches, we were nonetheless satisfied with the overall visual consistency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Colin Leveque<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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