"Two Days, One Night" Film Premiere at the 52nd New York Film Festival

Synopsis: In the working class drama action is key, “Two Days, One Night,” Marion Cotillard’s character, Sandra, has one weekend to go door to door to her co-workers’ homes and try to convince them to have Friday’s vote overturned. Sandra works at a factory that makes solar panels. On Friday, her co-workers voted to have her laid off, as each employee would receive a 1,000 Euro bonus if she were let go. This upcoming Monday, they will have a re-count and if she wins, she can keep her job. Sandra and her husband travel through the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods of Liege, Belgium, going to her co-workers homes, getting to know each of them in their personal lives and pleads them to stay. She asks her colleagues to vote in her favor on Monday, and evaluating their reactions, she discovers her inner strength.

As Sandra explains just as they need their bonus money, that, she too, needs her salary because she is a young mom, wife and will loose her home. The reactions of many are “I’m sorry, I need my bonus and you put yourself in my place”.

In Two Days, One Night, the urgent and ethical inquiry comes to life. Will Sandra remain in the factory and win over her colleagues? A Sundance Selects release.

The Dardenne Brothers talk about the filming process of Two Days One Night, the essence of the story and more at the NYFF.

What was the core of this film?

Luc Dardenne: This film is about a woman who starts off feeling beaten, who has lost her job and is emerging from a depression. We wanted to tell the story of this woman who threw a trajectory in which she looks and finds solidarity, regaining her strength. She is able not only to emerge from a depression but also come out triumphant from it.

Most of the camera shots are from behind Sandra’s character, with constant movement shots, can you talk more about this choice?

Luc Dardenne: We like to film her walking because if you walk with the character you have a sense that you are following her thinking.

Jean-Pierre Dardenne :Also we found it important to film Sandra’s path meeting and going to see every person; that we give equal weight to the characters within the frame, because when Sandra says “put yourself in my place” or they say “you put yourself in my place” it allows the spectator to look and put themselves in Sandra’s place and also in the other person’s situation.

There is a shift of Sandra’s overdose, being hospitalized, to feeling energized and fighting for her job when she is released. Do you consider this possible in reality?

Sandra doesn’t consider the option of finding another job until the very end, what made you decide to explore this only towards the end?

LD: Sandra’s priority was to go and see the others and have them change their minds; she is so lacking in confidence and lack of value in the eyes of others, that she needs to recupe this before she can move forward. Searching for solidarity gradually gives her strength, which at the end is the turning point of refusing the job and then makes another choice.

JD: In the beginning she hasn’t entirely lost her job in a sense that it is possible to have a revote. I know that in terms of my life if I have something that I haven’t entirely lost and there is room to fight for it, then I will fight to try to keep it until I really have lost it.  When one of the employees could loose his job, if she accepts it, in a certain level it does feel like a failure because it is a loss of solidarity within the work world.

What was the meaning behind Sandra making her son’s bed?

LD: That is a good question. She makes the bed because it is part of her daily routine. The suicide attempt is going to come but she doesn’t necessarily know that she is going to attempt to kill herself. We wanted to show a daily activity that she goes through.

JD: It is very interesting because she makes the bed and then in a typical way she takes all the pills. Somehow 2 different actions that have the same weight.