A Second Life was one of the standout films in its selection at the Ankara Film Festival. Set in Paris, the film explores themes of hearing impairment, silence, and depression with remarkable sensitivity, drawing particular attention for its sound design and visual choices.
In this interview, we spoke with Slama about the film’s creative process, its thematic decisions, and the sensory world at its core.

1) You use sound transitions and silences to reflect Elisabeth’s hearing impairment. What real-life experiences or artistic references inspired you to create such an immersive soundscape?

Laurent Slama: I am not a hearing-impaired person myself, so I don’t have direct experience of this condition. I spent a lot of time researching the subject and interviewing people with hearing loss to try to understand their auditory perception and how this condition affects their lives.

I like to see the cinema as a space where the audience can be plunged into a theater of sound and visual experience. With that in mind, the sound post-production team and I tried to make the film as immersive as possible. Of course, there was Sound of Metal, but we wanted to offer something a bit different and show a character who lives in an in-between state — between those who hear and those who don’t.

2)You use Monet’s “Water Lilies” as an inner refuge for Elisabeth, a place where she can escape the chaos and her auditory disorder. I wondered if there was a deeper resonance between the character and Monet himself — especially since Monet, in the last years of his life, painted despite severe visual impairment. Did this idea of an artist or individual continuing forward despite an altered perception of the world influence your choice of the painting or the construction of Elisabeth’s character?

I chose this painting very instinctively. I was looking for a space that could serve as a refuge for the character. This extraordinarily long painting (91 meters), with its partly figurative universe yet no human representation, felt like a possible source of comfort. A place where language does not necessarily belong, and where sensory experience takes precedence — something we all share: water, plants, reflections.

It was during the shoot that I learned Monet had painted part of the Water Lilies while suffering from cataracts. I then integrated that into the film, and I was pleased to discover that this intuition carried a deeper meaning.

3)The bond between Elisabeth and Elijah, although it develops over a short period of time, is both profound and fragile. Did you intentionally design this relationship as a form of “therapy,” or did the characters naturally lead you toward that dynamic during the writing process?

I was very influenced during the writing by Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf. It was a book I discovered as a teenager and was rereading at that time. There, too, one character helps another. So that was really at the foundation of the project. And I liked the idea of having a character like Elijah — I think I would have liked to have an Elijah in my own life at times.

4) The film uses a surprisingly warm color palette, despite the constant presence of deep melancholy. This warmth sometimes gives the impression of an “inner comfort,” as if Elisabeth is unconsciously trying to create an emotional space brighter than her reality. Was it your intention to juxtapose a soft visual universe with a darker psychological state — almost like a “depressive feel-good” — or was it more of a subjective viewpoint, a way of showing how she wishes to see herself rather than what she is actually going through?

With a subject like this, I didn’t want a grey or blue film. I wanted the colors to pull the character back toward life, toward the vibrancy of the world.

At the same time, I tried to completely isolate Elisabeth in a bubble. The background is distant, distorted — as though she were looking at the world through glass, unable to touch or be touched. In any case, the expression “depressive feel-good” speaks to me.

5) Do you currently have a project in development — a film, a collaboration, or an idea you can tell us a bit about? And if not, is there a project or theme you dream of working on in the future?

I’m currently writing several film projects. The most advanced is a thriller set in the streets of Paris — very different from A Second Life. It tells the story of a billionaire who is taken hostage by his housekeeper. A closed-door drama taking place in the open streets of Paris, among the crowds.