“Madame Ida”: interview with director Jacob Møller

At the 42th Torino Film Festival, FRED Film Radio interviewed Jacob Møller, director of “Madame Ida”, a movie presented in competition. A story of love and lack of love “Madame Ida” is the first feature film of Jacob Møller. Where did this story come from? “I suppose it came from when I was writing it, I was very fascinated about the meaning of love and lack of love in our lives. And that came from my own parents, who both of them randomly grew up in orphanages, quite hard lives, with not a lot of love in it, and that's led to some pretty tragic stories in my family. But they decided that me and my siblings were going to have a childhood with much more love and care than they had. And so I've just been fascinated by the meaning of love and care and security in our lives and what kind of human beings it creates, maybe not to have it in your lives”. The judgment Judgment is one of the theme addresses by the movie. All the three female characters are judged for a reason or another. How did Jacob Møller, a man, work on this aspect? “The truth is that I haven't thought about it that much”, admits the director. “I didn't make a decision: 'This has to be a female story'. That was just what this story required. Obviously, I'm not female and I'm not a mother, but I can tell you that I've never written three characters that are closer to myself than these three women are. And I'm not a woman, but I can relate to their struggles and their emotions and their tragedies and their judgments, they're very, very close to me. The truth is I haven't really given it much thought as to me as a man making a film about females. This was just what I wanted to make, I suppose”.