Surgeon of the soul
▶ Florian Zeller, French writer and screen conquering global stage
His plays have been staged in more countries than any French writer of his generation, and with his first film up for six Oscars, Florian Zeller looks set for still greater success.
At 41, Zeller has already had a glittering career, described as a “genius” by Le Figaro and “the most exciting new theater writer of our time” by The Guardian.
In Britain, he is compared to one of his heroes, Harold Pinter, and in France, to his most fabled of predecessors.
“He is a child of Moliere,” said French actor Pierre Arditi, who ap
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Day Zero, directed by Kevin Sim, describes the urgent water scarcity situation in places around the world such as the water crisis in South Africa’s Cape Town in 2018, the huge negative g impact p of deforestapeared in two of Zeller’s plays, The Truth and The Lie.
“When we read his plays, we think that it’s simple but it’s much more complex, and that is what defines a great writer... He’s a young surgeon of the human soul.”
But it was in creating a film adaptation of his most successful play, The Father, that Zeller achieved one of his most cherished dreams: to work with Anthony Hopkins.
“I consider him the greatest living actor,” Zeller told AFP.
“When I spoke to friends about it, I felt they were smiling politely when I said I could work with Anthony Hopkins.” tion of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil on the global water supply and the alarming rate of water depletion caused by extensive farming in the Midwest of the US.
According to its executive producer David Wallerstein, the documentary aims to raise awareness and urge people to take action about water conservation no matter where they are.
Wallerstein, also Tencent’s chief exploration officer, initiated the call to use AI to manage g
When they finally met, Hopkins already knew the play thanks to its Tony- winning Broadway production, and agreed to take on the part as an elderly man suffering dementia.
The partnership has proved a huge success, with Hopkins winning best actor and Zeller best adapted screenplay at Britain’s BAFTA awards in April. They are up for the same awards at the Oscars on Sunday.
Already a household name in France thanks to a series of novels, the first published when he was just 22, Zeller fell in love with theater after iconic French author Francoise Sagan recommended him to a director.
“The French stage was a marvellous destination and a dream,” he the relationship between food, energy and water as a potentiation solution to sustainability issues.
Understanding the relationship between food, energy, and water is critical to solving the sustainability problem, according to Wallerstein.
The documentary coproduced by Keo Films, OoS Pictures and Tencent, is also available in a dozen countries around the world. told AFP. “But it was when my plays were staged in London and had a big success, with three at the same time... that’s when they started being picked up in Asia, Latin America and the US.”
They have now been performed in more than 40 countries, and won awards from Tokyo to New York.
It perhaps made sense that Zeller, who considers Pinter a “major inspiration,” made his mark in England.
“There is something that is close to the British soul in my work, where the subtext is as important as the text, where the apparent simplicity of the language hides powerful hidden currents that can be quite violent,” he told AFP.
He went further at the BAFTAs, saying: “I’m French, as you can hear, but in my heart I’m English.”
Christopher Hampton, Zeller’s English translator and a renowned playwright in his own right, says it was nonetheless tough to get backing when they first tried to bring The Father to the British stage.
“It wasn’t easy to get the producers to believe this was the kind of play people would want to see,” Hampton told AFP.
They got a short run in a small Bath theater but, despite strong reviews, still struggled to have it taken to London, only getting slots at smaller theaters before finally transferring to the West End.
“Even then, I think they took the theater for only eight weeks... and what happened was that it was so sold- out that they had to take another run,” said Hampton.
“It was a run- away success.”
French writer Florian Zeller ( first from right) poses with other writers for pictures in Paris on December 3, 2020.