"The Ice Tower", interview with the director Lucile Hadžihalilović and the actress Marion Cotillard

Lucile Hadžihalilović  comes to the Berlinale 2025 , in competition, with her new film "The Ice Tower" starring Marion Cotillard. the film is a personal take on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen, that was a favourite of the director when she was a kid. With extreme aesthetics and a dark sense of beauty, the film is daring and intriguing. We talked with the director on it and with Marion Cotillard for her portrait of a cold and heartless woman, at least it seems... Setting the film in the 70's was a narrative necessity Lucile Hadžihalilović reveals that her choice to set "The Ice Tower" in the 70's came from the need of using some of the simplicity and possibility of belief that was still typical of  those years, when we lived  without internet and social media and cellphones , where we could still believe in the magic of unknown things and iconic personalities. Building a personal fake back story to the character Marion Cotillard reveals how she built the character of the cold Cristina, in " The Ice Tower". Marion invented in her head a detailed back story for her character, that neither the director or anybody else knew, made of failures, pains, victories and losses, so that she had a basket of emotions  to pick from when acting. All of this knowing how dark, and cold and merciless her character needed to be.