La Mif

Frederic Baillif’s remarkably authentic docu-style drama follows a group of teenage girls in a residential care home. Emerging from difficult backgrounds, here in the safe house, the girls find a new sense of community full of unexpected tensions and intimacies. An incident triggers a chain of reactions that reveal the imperfections of the youth protection system, as well as the demons that haunt the girls. Created in close collaboration with the young actors, La Mif tenderly questions what it might actually mean to be part of a family.

‘We spent about two years on improvisation workshops with very few rules. My wife and children often accompanied me to the home to stay in touch with the girls, open up about who we are and develop a real relationship. We shot the movie without any budget because we couldn’t wait: The girls were growing up and we based it on what we’d done before. The whole process was first to interview each of them. Based on that, we transformed reality into fiction, together. Each of the girls had the task of making their own story, some of them I didn’t even know, I learned them when shooting. I wanted them to really own their own story.’

Director Fred Baillif, from an Interview in Variety.