Q&A Festival Interview
with the director of SILHOUETTES, Yannik Ruault.
About the Film & Its Origins
What inspired you to make SILHOUETTES?
The starting point was the idea of perception as something alive — not just a way of seeing, but a process that breathes, expands and contracts. I wanted to create a film where the viewer experiences perception itself, rather than a story about perception. The setting of the Consular House in Edinburgh brought a quiet, intimate atmosphere that felt perfect for this kind of exploration.
Who are the two characters, and what is their relationship?
They are the French Consul and his female friend. Their relationship is intimate but not defined in conventional narrative terms. They are companions in perception. What matters is how their presence activates the space, the light, the silence. They are not “roles” — they are carriers of sensation.
Why the title SILHOUETTES?
Because silhouettes are the threshold between presence and absence. They are bodies without details, memories without faces. The film exists exactly in that space — between what we see and what remains invisible.
Aesthetics & Style
Your film is visually very still. Why this choice of fixed camera?
Stillness allows the emergence of what haunts silences: a changing light, a breath, a chance to "let the shadows speak." When the frame remains still, the viewer's attention is sharpened. Stillness becomes a form of inner movement.
But you also include sequences with movement — handheld camera. How do these sequences contrast?
They mark transitions in perception. The opening shot, handheld camera, of the consul's friend in the garden, is the first breath, the awakening of the gaze. The subjective shot during the reading of Paul Eluard's poem is the embodied memory of the consul's friend—then their two voices intertwine (those of the consul and his friend), revealing the consul's desire and foreshadowing the final scene. The finale is the synthesis, a moment when perception becomes fluid and circular. The movement is significant because the majority of the film is calm and static.
Why use monochromatic filters and RGB separations?
These effects come from the physiology of the eye. I wanted to create a “retinal cinema,” where colours behave like photoreceptor layers. When the image becomes monochrome or splits into RGB components, it’s as if the film is revealing the internal machinery of perception.
The film uses superimpositions. What do they express?
Superimpositions allow different layers of time and memory to coexist. It’s like watching a thought happen. The image carries both the present and what haunts the present.
Sound & Rhythm
The tram sound reappears throughout the film. What does it represent?
It's the pulse of the film. It's both a real sound and an internal rhythm. It connects interior and exterior spaces and gives the film an underlying pulse – like a heartbeat. It is also a mechanical sound, like a dramatic counterpoint, thus supporting the consul's troubled inner state. It also embodies the idea of travel, both that of his departed friend and the more internal journey of the film itself.
Why include breathing and vocal textures?
Breathing is the most organic sound we have. It makes perception physical. The vocal layers, especially when fragmented, act like emotional particles — not dialogue, but presence.
The film is quiet. Is silence important for you?
Absolutely. Silence is a space where perception expands. It’s the moment when the viewer can feel the image instead of just watching it.
Narrative vs. Perception
Some viewers say the film is abstract. How do you respond?
I think it’s concrete — but in a different way. Instead of telling a story with events, it tells a story with sensations. It’s abstract only if we expect traditional narrative. But if we watch with the body rather than with expectations, it becomes very tangible.
What role do symbolic objects play?
They act as memory cells within the film. The teddy bear represents traces of childhood, tenderness, and a certain nostalgia. The mirror and its reflections represent self-perception, a perception that questions the individual and their space. Paul Eluard's collection of poems, his poem "The curve of your eyes encircles my heart…," represents vision translated into words, vision as a body of desires. The portraits represent collective memory within a private space – the portrait of General de Gaulle is part of the intimate history of this house, since he bought it in 1942. These objects circulate from one scene to another, organically connecting the whole.
What do you want the audience to feel?
I want them to feel that perception itself is alive — that seeing is not passive. If someone says, “The film made me pay attention differently,” then the film has worked.
Organic Motion (the method)
What is “Organic Motion”?
It's a method of storytelling that I've developed over the course of my films. Based on the screenplay, I explore the film's rhythm and movement, which shape its perception. Organic Motion is a writing tool and a tool for critical analysis before production—between the screenplay (finished or nearly finished) and the storyboard—a kind of cinematic alphabet. This allows me to analyse and make the most of the film's cinematic essence, thus creating a unique body for each film.
How did you apply Organic Motion to SILHOUETTES specifically?
The organic structure of SILHOUETTES is inspired by the structure of the retina. It is a circular, cyclical, non-linear structure. Each sequence was conceived as a "perceptual cell," endowed with its own light, its own sound, and its own symbolic objects. These cells were then arranged like the parts of a body: they inhale and exhale, expand and contract. It echoes the idea of the cycle of life, a cycle in which we each have our own mission, our own adventure, to undertake.
Is Organic Motion a theory or a practical tool?
Both. It’s a way of understanding perception and a way of building a film. SILHOUETTES is a good example because it is both a cinematic experience and a research-based experiment.
The Film’s Themes
What is the emotional core of the film?
Intimacy through attention. The relationship between the Consul and his friend is quiet, delicate. Their presence opens a space where perception becomes tender and vulnerable.
Can you tell us more about the kung-fu scene?
This is a passage from the film, which can be seen as a climax. The kung-fu scene, practiced by the consul's friend, embodies the body, matter, but a state that is becoming fragile like the image that is dislocating, peeling away, altering its layers of colour, transparency, and light one by one, in a technique developed for this film that I named "multi-layered pictures".
The following scene, which takes place in a sort of bathroom, is just as intriguing…
This bathroom scene presents the consul's friend's body, rendered immaterial, a shadow of herself, her silhouette, in a scene of tender intimacy. This silhouette is veiled by retinal images, as if projected onto a screen – creating a mise en abyme of the cinematic gaze: "I’m watching a screened picture that shows me another screened picture."
Why is the film set in a consular house?
It’s a place where personal and political histories overlap. A house that is both private and institutional. That duality reinforces the film’s themes of memory, identity, and perception.
Audience & Interpretation
What if viewers interpret the film in totally different ways?
It's perfect. A perceptual film isn't meant to be decoded, but to be experienced. Each viewer brings their own memories and their own body to it… A friend told me the following: the consul who used to live in this house, and who has since passed away, had a friend with whom he shared a long correspondence, exchanging many poems… this friend also practiced kung fu… so perhaps this film can be seen as a staging of the ghosts that haunt this consular house? A dream that might resonate with Shakespeare's quote from THE TEMPEST: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a slumber.”… Paul Eluard also lived in this house for a while.
How should one watch SILHOUETTES?
Slowly. With the same attention you might give to a painting or to music. Not looking for “what happens,” but for “how it feels.”
Final Thoughts
What do you hope remains in viewers after the film?
A shift in how they experience seeing. Even a small one. If the film leaves the sensation that perception is something alive — then that's the legacy I hope for.