I had just been left by my husband. With him, I had two children and produced two electronic music albums. I thought he was the love of my life. His departure left me devastated, with an overwhelming desire to disappear. During the first school holidays after he left, he took the children. Unable to bear the loneliness in Paris, I decided to fly to London to visit my dear friend Bea Brunet, who had recently moved there with her new love, Howie B. But in my state of absolute distress, I couldn’t stand their company, so I took a hotel room.

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There, alone, I broke down. The tears were endless. Before leaving, I had bought a Nokia phone to stay in touch with my children. After twenty-four hours of uninterrupted crying, exhausted, I noticed by chance that my Nokia had a camera. Curious, I tried it out.

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Having a bit of an acting background, I started crying again, this time for the camera. When I rewatched the footage, reality hit me : forty years old, my face distorted by tears – what a miserable sight !

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So, I decided to film myself raw, naked in bed, then standing. It was a revelation. A forty-year-old woman, not so bad after all, very different from the image my husband had reflected back to me. I finally saw myself as I was : a woman alone, vulnerable, but real, in this room on the twenty-fifth floor of a London hotel. I wondered what I was really crying about. Then, I went outside, camera in hand, to capture London : the taxi, the bus, the streets, the Tate Museum, the Millennium Bridge where I met Bea. I kept filming.

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Back in Paris, I began filming the riverbanks, the Eiffel Tower, before heading home. The videos stayed on my phone for a few days. Then I showed them to my dear actress friend, Elise Hobbé. “Girl, what you’ve got on your Nokia is a movie !!!” she exclaimed. Initially skeptical, she managed to convince me that I needed to edit this footage.

At Fnac, where I had bought the phone, I asked for help from customer service to transfer the videos to my Mac. A kind but overworked young man agreed to help me between two customers. After several back-and-forths and just as many disappointments, he told me that his cousin, an editor, could help me. And that’s how I met Allan Gabali, thanks to Styve, the young man from Fnac.

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Allan, cigarette in hand, watched the videos and said, “This is great, I’ll edit it.” Styve added, “Yes, I’ll help too.” I was thrilled ! We got to work. But the first attempts were disappointing. The video quality left much to be desired.

That’s when I discovered a short film competition organized by Orange, during the Cannes Film Festival. Six hundred participants, ten days to create a five-minute film. This challenge gave us new energy. We were already imagining ourselves with champagne in hand, at the Carlton.

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Allan cut the footage, keeping only the essence. Styve, a graphic designer and musician, added words over the images and created the credits. We formed an amazing team, funny and tight-knit.

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For the image, I had to resign myself to filming again, this time in the darkness of Allan’s bathroom, improvising some effects. We added the sentences, but something was still missing. In the meantime, Styve sent me heartfelt letters that brought me back to life. I had fallen in love with him.

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We also needed royalty-free music. I used two tracks from my old band, 9 avenue B, and for the end, I called Hervé Philippe from my record label “Mélodie” to ask for permission to use ‘Embraceable You’ by Diana Washington. He enthusiastically agreed.

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We named our production “Les Productions Parallèles” because Styve said we had met in parallel dimensions, between life and death. Allan submitted the film to Orange just before the deadline. We began dreaming of Cannes.

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Fifteen days later, Styve called me. We were in the top twenty-five out of six hundred. Crazy ! But we still had to wait for the final decision. Only the top five would go to Cannes. We weren’t among them. A huge wave of disappointment washed over us.

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Soon after, a production company called me : “Are you Sophie Reverdi ?” The film critic from Libération, Annick Rivoire, had written an article praising my film as the only original one among the six hundred entries. A victory, a true liberation.

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The film was selected for the Imaginaria Festival in Bari, Italy, where it met with notable success. Then at the Pocket Film Festival, and it was shown on the big screen at Beaubourg, at the Forum des Images, during several thematic evenings.

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So, when a friend tells you there’s a movie in your Nokia, believe her.

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