"Some people say 'It's a road movie.' I say, it's a movie on the road." Don't Cry Germaine is turning up a winning film on both sides of the Atlantic, winning the People's Choice Award at Flanders and Mannheim, as well as Best Actor at Ft Lauderdale. For Belgian director Alain de Halleux, this is his feature debut and these prizes confirm his outlook that filmmaking is a discovery oneself, a discovery of the characters through the shooting and this discovery process continues through the eyes of the audience.

It seems that you switched from photography to cinema...

Actually, I began with science, I studied chemistry. Then I was a war photographer. I chose cinema because I thought it was a place where it was possible to do anything I wanted: music, photography, literature, theatre... I did a 90' feature for television, and this one is the first for cinema...

It's a special film, it has already won prizes at the Ghent International Flanders Film Festival, in Fort Lauderdale, tell us about the festival experience, especially Mannheim...

I love to be here. For the presentation book of the festival, the organizers asked directors three questions, among which "How would you characterize a good festival?" At that time, I didn't know how it worked here. I answered "Like we directors make movies with shots, festival organizers design a piece of art with many films." What I didn't know was that there is a very precise line here, all the movies I saw are so human, and so original. It means that Michael [Koetz, Festival Director], this crazy Michael, really built something with this festival, and consequently all the directors I've met from all other the world, it was so easy to talk with them. Because they are just simple, human, and I love it. It's the best festival in the world! (laughs)

Let's talk about the main characters of your film, played by Dirk Roofhooft and Rosa Renom...

Do you know what Roofhooft means in Flemish? It means the "head thief" which for an actor is amazing, isn't it? And for actress, "Renom" means "who has a new name", which is also very interesting for an actress...

Why a Flemish actor speaking French?

Why not? We are living in a country with both languages, and Villevorde, the city where we shot the film is a place where people speak Flemish and French. There are very good French speaking actors in Belgium. Very, very good. But the problem is that the community is so small you cannot find the right one, it's not like in the USA or in France, where the amount of actors is so big that you have a lot of choice. And as we didn't find our actor in the French-speaking community, we searched in the Flemish one.

Dirk Roofhooft shared the Best actor award at Fort Lauderdale...

Really? You tell me something! That's great! He's for me the kind of perfect European actor. In Europe, we have to speak at least 4 languages to be international, and he can play in French, Flemish, English, Spanish, which is quite amazing.

He is a very interesting character, very physical, like a child, who goes through a complete metamorphosis. Tell us more about this character...

I enjoyed very much writing the script with Eric [van Beuren, the producer], attacking male behaviour. I took a lot of myself, a lot of Eric and a lot of my father to describe Gilles! And a lot from the book, of course, since it is based on a book. I enjoy very much making fun of men, since in families women act much more responsibly than men. At the beginning of the movie, Gilles is really an irresponsible person - he's also a bit like Oedipus; I'm not talking about the complex, which is just not interesting, but the story of Oedipus is great, because here is someone who says: "I want to find the person responsible for the pest in Thebes", to discover at the end that he is responsible. And we are all like this living in a kind of illusion world, illusion about ourselves, so when we are in trouble, we always put the blame on someone else, it's easier. And Gilles will discover his own responsibility, he will open his eyes like Oedipus. That's what gave me the desire to adapt the book.

You know, when I am writing a script, I don't know everything, I discover new things shooting the movie, and I still discover things through the eyes of the spectators. And I realize that the movie deals also a lot with trust, the trust Germaine has in her husband. And I think this trust is very important, because many conflicts in families come from the fact that we are trying to change the other, the partner or the children. But in fact it's just an illusion, we cannot change them, because we are not even able to change ourselves. Germaine's trust in her husband is deep, even if he behaves in a crazy fashion, she trusts him deeply, and the consequence of that is that Gilles will grow and open his eyes. I discovered that with the audience. I think it is important not to make things in order to achieve something, it is better to stay in a process of discovery, I don't make all these crazy things in order to achieve a movie, I make a movie in order to understand a character, and myself. And if you are working like this, the process never ends. I'm not making movies for the audience, I'm making movies with the audience. They are part of the process. Without them, the film doesn't exist.