Charlotte Gainsbourg’s documentary on her mother, the legendary actress, singer, and model Jane Birkin – aptly titled Jane By Charlotte – has received its first trailer, released ahead of its premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.
In the upcoming film, Gainsbourg portrays Birkin as a mother, artist, and wife of the French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. In a recent interview with Hollywood Reporter, she explains that the project was “an excuse” to get close to her mother, as well as a “declaration of love”.
“The excuse was to get a team together and ask her if I could film her,” Gainsbourg says. “The idea was to be able to look at her really with the eye of a daughter.” Known as a singer and actor, the film also marks Gainsbourg’s directorial debut, and promises a different side of her mother than the cult icon that “everybody has seen”.
“Everybody has an image of her in (the 1970s),” adds Gainsbourg. “I didn’t want to have these beautiful but stereotyped images of her. I wanted her today. I didn’t care about what people knew of her or what they wanted to see of her. It was done in a very, very selfish way for my own pleasure.”
In the interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Gainsbourg also shares her plans to open her father’s Paris home as a museum, having preserved it since his death in 1991.
Watch the trailer for Jane By Charlotte via Screen International below. The film currently doesn’t have US distribution.