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For several months, Mika found strange things on his motorcycle: red ribbons, coins, locks… until a mini padlock hidden in his engine chain almost caused a serious accident. Determined to find the culprit, he remotes his motorcycle with the help of his friends.

Very quickly, everyone’s imaginations and projections blur the lines. Harassment, flirting or revenge? Is the situation romantic, romantic, or threatening? Mika and his gang lead the investigation.

Carefully released in cinemas at the beginning of the year, Mika Ex Machina, directed by Mika Tard and Déborah Saïag, is a surprising and unclassified film where we laugh a lot. How did this project come about? How did it find a place in cinemas?

We asked a few questions to its two instigators, the tandem Mika Tard and Deborah Saïag, co-founders of the collective Les Quiches, director of the musical Foon, screenwriters of the film Encore Happy and creators of the mini-series Kings.

AlloCiné: Mika Ex Machina is a hybrid project, quite unclassifiable. If you had to give a label, what genre would you give the film?

Mika TardyCo-director and co-writer: I would say that it is an investigative comedy that has the characteristics of crossbreeding several genres like thriller, romantic comedy, diary, social fable and friendship film.

We wanted to stay true to what happened. And reality has always pushed boundaries, tracks, and our brains. In the end, this is a really surprising and unclassifiable film object.

Deborah SayagCo-Director and Co-Writer: Filming this investigation with our cell phones allowed us to capture everything that was happening to us, as well as our questions, our anxieties, our fantasies. All of which we rarely actually have access to.

At what point did you tell yourself that this story that was happening to you could be made into a movie?

MT: At first I refused. Three years ago I was already a victim of harassment and I was afraid that the same thing would happen again. That’s why I didn’t talk about it. But after the accident, when I started talking about what was happening—red scarves, ribbons, coins, padlocks, chains—my friends picked up on the story. And everyone saw something different based on their experience: ex-harassment, marriage proposal, maraboutage practice… It was interesting to see how these strange gestures opened the door to completely different predictions. At that moment we said to ourselves, maybe there was material to make a film.

DS: The trigger for filming really came when Mika had an accident. A mini padlock embedded in the engine chain of his motorcycle almost turned the story into a tragedy. Filming was a way to protect ourselves, to document what had happened, to gather evidence, to try to find the identity of the person who did it, and also to put a screen between our emotions and reality, which was becoming very disturbing.

So we shot it, but we didn’t know what we would find, or if it would be interesting enough to make a film. And when we finally managed to solve this investigation, we said to ourselves, well, it’s possible to make a movie about this story.

As we see in the film, you did extensive investigative work and filmed almost everything that happened to you over the course of several weeks. How many hours of footage did you complete? How did you go about editing with such a large amount of images?

MT: It was obviously a mountain to climb… after the craziness of the investigation was the craziness of editing! I faced one hundred and forty hours of running. It was a big challenge because there were a thousand ways to approach it all. My goal was to stay as close as possible to what we experienced while finding a way to fit that experience into an hour and a half of film. It was a real headache.

DS: Mika continued to cut. It was a work of patience as well as perspective. Fortunately, we were lucky to be surrounded by our producers – Nicolas Elgoz, François Puget and Ollie Barbe – who were valuable allies in refining certain choices. Most of the big decisions were made in post-production and we were surrounded by an exceptional and highly motivated team to help us make this film happen.

MT: The specifications were clear: we had to maintain the suspension that was going through our investigation. We live in a time where everything moves very fast and the idea was to restore the pace that was ours with the collective energy of the group.

Mika Ex Machina is a movie that has been released in theaters. Have you considered another type of distribution: a film for a platform, a series… Why did you support a theatrical release?

DS: The first cut was 12 hours, and from my point of view it was a series. I loved the rich and unpredictable side of this investigation. I was convinced that we had an immersive and intimate series on our hands that could be of interest to the platform or even become a web series. However, Mika dreamed of turning this story into a movie. He felt that for more than an hour and a half, he could create a unique and exciting cinematic object. He convinced me to give it a try and get into the game.

We worked for almost a year to cut, cut, cut. I think the fact that we were both screenwriters helped us a lot in making choices that weren’t necessarily obvious at first. Therefore, the decision to make a motion picture was made during editing, when we dared to make sharp cuts and arrange our script with tools.

MT: Cinema is a place where we experience emotions, the room is alive, people react. The theatrical release of the film was an important goal to explore the collective aspect of this history.

Mika Ex Machina hits theaters on January 1st. We know it’s not easy to stand out from the flood of releases and find theaters that have seats for movies. How did you experience this ride? What were the difficulties and pleasant surprises?

MT: Our first show at the opening of the Cheries-Chéris Festival was an unforgettable moment. We had never shown a film to more than three people in a room and we didn’t know how it would be received. The day before the screening, I was paralyzed by doubt: What if I didn’t find humor or suspense? And then the show started, there were almost 700 people in the room and there… it exceeded my expectations.

Hearing people laugh, feeling the energy building as the movie went on, it was crazy. When it was over and the room was applauding, I knew Mica Ex Machina was going to touch people and have an audience.

DS: For a film like ours, the reality of the release is very different from that of a classic film. We are facing a huge industrial machine, and we, with our homemade film, have only been released in very few cinemas.

It may seem disappointing, but it’s actually very gratifying to think that we can make movies this way too. Our distributor Pyramide took on the challenge of bringing this UFO film to theaters and they succeeded. This is what makes each showing even more valuable.

How did you make the film exist as much as possible?

DS: We promoted it on social networks and I personally discovered a new world.

MT: The sisters had never caught the wave of these platforms before and she had to learn how to communicate about the release of the film. So he discovered stories, links, posts, messages in PM… and now he’s addicted…

DS: It’s a disaster… but hey, it allowed me to connect with people I would never have had access to, and some of them went to see the film after our discussions. It’s still great to connect with people directly. Then, of course, there were all our friends who were also covering their social networks.

It was a surprise to discover viewers we didn’t know were talking about the film, texting and sharing their enthusiasm on social media as well.

MT: Every day we get messages from strangers who are happy to see our film. It is a pleasure to experience it. It proves that different cinema can exist and find a way.

Mika Ex Machina is currently in theaters.