Few directors are on a roll right now like Céline Sciamma. The French filmmaker behind Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Girlhood, Tomboy and Water Lilies is creating some of the most engaging, enriching films of recent memory – and is about to do it all over again with her childhood fantasy Petite Maman. To celebrate her rapid rise, the new issue of Empire features a major new interview with Sciamma herself – talking her visionary work, her distinctive voice, and what drives her as a director – in which she discussed the films that most shaped her growing up.
Sciamma opened up about “two films that changed the way that I look at cinema” – including a firm favourite from the legendary David Lynch, 1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. “It was the first film of his that I had seen, and I watched it at a cinema in the Latin Quarter in Paris,” Sciamma recalls. “I hadn’t seen Twin Peaks ever before so I didn’t now what was going on; I was totally lost, but also into it like crazy. When I got out, the whole world felt different.”
![Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me](https://images.bauerhosting.com/legacy/media/615f/1245/7774/cf40/e8f8/5d87/twin-peaks-fwwm.jpg?auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
The other film that made an indelible impression, she says, was Noémie Lvovsky’s La Vie Ne Me Fait Pas Peur (known here as I’m Not Afraid Of Life). “It’s a film about the friendship between a group of young women from heir childhood to their adulthood,” she explains. “It was the first time that I had felt so connected to something on the screen, while showing me that young women could also direct films.” If Sciamma’s own work feels like a direct portal into her unique perspective, it can be traced back to both of these formative films. “The connection between these two experiences was that I was connected with the director, and not the film. It was like being in the brain of that person,” she says.
![Empire November 2021](https://images.bauerhosting.com/legacy/media/6154/5d62/b1a3/8c0a/1f30/e5b3/empnov21-sciamma.jpg?auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
Read Empire’s full Céline Sciamma interview in the Ghostbusters: Afterlife issue, on sale now and available to order online here.
![Empire – November 2021 cover crop](https://images.bauerhosting.com/legacy/media/614c/6485/f778/1bfd/4cc4/ebb4/empire-november-2021-cover.jpg?auto=format&w=1440&q=80)
Petite Maman comes to UK cinemas from 19 November.