If we can save you precious minutes of reading, let's answer the title of this article: the truth is, we don't know for sure. On the other hand, we do know from a reliable source that a restored version of Carne (which we've been waiting for 5 years) was publicly screened with the utmost discretion last August.
We promise we haven't fallen into clickbait. But there's been a wave of panic in certain cinephile circles since the publication of an article in Variety, on the occasion of Gaspar Noé's appearance at the Cairo Film Festival, where he was invited to give a masterclass: it seems he has ideas for his next film. Well, breaking news, a filmmaker makes movies as much as a carpenter makes carpentry!
Asked what genres he'd like to try his hand at, he replies that he's particularly interested in “documentary, war film, and horror. Probably I should even try to mix those three genres. I also would like to do a movie with young children, or a movie for children.” The information, reported by IndieWire among others, was supported by the filmmaker himself on Instagram.
A movie for children? By Gaspar Noé?!
The idea is not new. In a 2010 interview conducted by Julien Hairault for Versus magazine, during Enter the Void's promotion, he said:
“I want to make an erotic movie, but it could be an animated film as well. My mom asked me when will I do a movie for children. If 2001 fascinated me so much, it's because it was a General Audience film, and discovering it at the age of six leaves its mark.”
The idea never left him: he continued to evoke it in the midst of promoting Climax. For The Guardian, he recalled his attachment to Kubrick's film:
My own love for cinema began at the age of seven. When I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. It blew my mind. I was obsessed with it. So I wish I could make a movie that speaks to kids the way that one spoke to me.”
Let's not expect him to direct the next Toy Story, even though the third opus moved him to tears.
A movie starring children ?
If you've seen Enter the Void, Love or Climax, you'd be thinking that he's directed young children before. The difference is that, for some years now, he has been talking about his wish to have them as main characters, without middle-aged adults. In 2018, for Der Spiegel, when he didn't know he'd be shooting Vortex, he said he wanted to make a film with elderly characters or “very young children aged four or five. It's such a fascinating age when they start to discover the language and use it for their own purposes.”
Should we understand that he had simply preferred to make films with older characters rather than a film with children? Not really, if an interview with Variety in 2022 is to be believed, in which he reaffirmed his desire to film young children in a project with little dialogue.
As for ideas for a war or horror film, these too had been on the table for many years. In 2002, after Irréversible, he told Séquences that he had three film projects in mind:
What are your projects now? I still have the erotic movie [probably Love - Ed.], a psychedelic movie[Enter the Void - Ed.] and a long-term project, a psychological horror movie that I can't do just yet. Why? Because it's even darker than Irréversible...
And as for the idea - widely discussed for at least a decade - of making a documentary using all the tricks of the cinema, several subjects have crossed his mind without him ever mentioning them publicly. In 2006, however, he was planning to make a longer version of AIDS, in addition to expressing his wish to return to Africa.
It's worth noting, nonetheless, that the more he's on the road or giving interviews, the less he's on set. And 2024 was marked by several public events.
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