Critics Award at the Festival 2 Cinéma de Valenciennes and Official Selection at the Angoulême Film Festival de la Francophonie, the moving documentary Madame Hofmann opens in French cinemas today. It takes us into the day-to-day life of Sylvie, who has worked for 40 years as a surveillance manager at the North Hospital in Marseille. An impressive portrait of humanity that opens your eyes to a profession that is as important as it is demanding!
At the center of this feature film is a woman who is at once persistent and full of kindness, whose honesty will make you smile as much as she moves you with precision, a person who comes in contact with death every day while working. Department of Oncology. If Sylvie Hoffmann’s energetic personality brings so much to this documentary, director Sébastien Lifschitz already had the idea for this film in mind before meeting her…
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“I met Sylvie by chance during a casting.”
Chance works very well sometimes, and that is the case with the first meeting between Sebastien Lifschitz and Sylvie Hoffmann. “I wanted to portray a woman struggling in a hospital.” explains the director, to whom we owe the excellent documentary “Adults”.
Next is the search for nursing staff members who have agreed to participate in this project through Casting Director Kendrin Lapuiade. In the middle of the pandemic, when hospitals no longer welcome ordinary visitors, all this work is done online, mainly through social networks, then by phone and video. Among the people they met, a certain Sylvie, just had to share her nursing contacts with them…
“We saw each other for the first time in front of the bakery, during the lunch break: I see how Sylvie arrives, like in the movie, very spontaneously, without a filter. It was marked by pandemic months. He was very honest with me and the more he started to open up, the more I became interested in him as a romantic date. “ Sebastien Lifschitz recalls.
If the casting process goes ahead, the director can’t forget this nurse executive and asks to see Sylvie in action at her workplace, surrounded by her team. His discovery under these conditions confirms his first intuition.
“He’s been in the business for forty years and it shows. It was this maturity and this achievement that I wanted to capture. Sylvie finishes her career and is rich for life. I told her, “This woman I’ve been looking for months, I wish it was you.” He was extremely surprised. “ he says.
Although surprised, Sylvie Hoffmann accepts Sebastien Lifschitz’s proposal after a test day of filming, as do her colleagues, who also capture the admiration of the public throughout the film. If Sylvie’s choice is obvious from the first minutes of the documentary, it is especially thanks to the impressive research of Sandrin Lapuiade and the director’s lighting work.
Meet Sylvie in Madame Hofmann in theaters today.
Source: Allocine

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