Director of ‘Homecoming’ Addresses Criticism at Cannes Film Festival


Reuters says that some people are worried about a scene in the Cannes Film Festival entry “Homecoming” in which young people get close.

Catherine Corsini, a French film director, said that in the future, she would work with intimacy coaches and do more to help young actors.

The French government stopped giving money to the movie when they found out that a scene had been added without permission from the official group that looks out for the safety of child players.

Corsini told reporters on Thursday that if she were in a similar situation again, she would do things differently and bring in experts to help players prepare for sex scenes.

“I would ask myself more questions,” said Corsini. “Maybe I was being a bit pretentious, thinking I had 30-35 years of experience in my career, and maybe I thought I had more experience than an intimacy coach.”

“I think that basically, I would have paid more attention to make the actresses more at ease,” she said.

“Homecoming” is about a Paris maid named Khedidja, who Aissatou Diallo Sagna plays. She and her two teenage daughters, Jessica and Farah, who Suzy Bemba and Esther Gohourou play, go to Corsica for work.

The family is going back to the island they left 15 years ago because of a tragedy.

On Tuesday, Corsini revealed to Variety magazine that she removed the passionate sequence from the final cut “to calm everyone down, especially so that people would stop bothering the actors.”

Both Gohourou and the other child actor in the scene, Harold Orsoni, have claimed that they were offered the services of an intimacy coach but declined them.

This year, Corsini is one of a record seven women producers who are vying for the Palme d’Or, which is the top prize.