A Bird at the Movies: A Movie That Kicks Off 2025 in Style

For Andrea Arnold, the birth of an idea always begins with the image she visualizes in her head. For Bird, it was the silhouette of a naked man standing on the roof of a tall tower shrouded in fog. “It was mysterious and magical. At that time I did not know who he was and what he would become. I just wondered what he was doing there“, the multi-award winning director explained to AlloCiné.

That man has become a bird, a strange man – played by Franz Rogowski – who meets Bailey, a 12-year-old girl from a disadvantaged background in Kent, England. He is searching for himself, trying to build his life in a difficult environment, and in the presence of this stranger, he sees the arrival of a guardian angel who came to save him.

“I was thinking of a slightly androgynous actress for her role, someone a little different“- explains the filmmaker. Then he met Franz Rogowski, playing a painful man who is not like the others. Andrea Arnold doesn’t really like to explain the whys and wherefores of her films, especially for a bird, leaving the audience free to make their own interpretations. “It would be a shame to explain everything. It is up to people to create their own ideas.”

A bird is like a blank canvas. Everyone projects what they want. Next to him we find Nikia Adams, a 14-year-old girl who takes her first steps on the screen here. He was noticed thanks to the wild casting, like many actors in the cinema of Andrea Arnold. “We went to the schools where we filmed and it was a little different from what I wrote.The director reveals.

“He had a very strong presence and he was the kid I remember the most. It was a little different from what I wrote, but I followed my instinct, continues Andrea Arnold. I changed the writing of the character in the script based on the elements I learned about him, his life.” The ideal heroine for Andrea Arnold’s film, Nikia Adams is most disturbing.

A film made with non-professional actors

The neighborhood seen in Bird, Gravesend, is not far from where the filmmaker grew up. As always, it brings together professional actors (Barry Keoghan) and non-professionals. “I’m glad I’m working like this, but it’s not easy, especially with the time constraints common to a low-budget film..” Too often a filmmaker changes plans when he thinks rare gems will go.

So were the three siblings. “In the script, they were different, they were not the same age, but they were so beautiful, these three. so amazing All you had to do was let them into any room and they would come alive..” It’s an authentic and powerful energy that is present in every actor in the film that comes through a bird and gives it all its beauty.

Commentary collected by Thomas Desroches, Cannes, May 2024.

You can see Andrea Arnold’s Bird in the cinema