Interview of Flore Vallery-Radot by Freya Bennett
In A Little Bag for Me, filmmaker and photographer Flore Vallery-Radot turns the camera inward, collaborating with her daughter Léonore to explore one of life’s most universal—and often underdiscussed—transitions: puberty. A Little Bag for Me is an intimate, funny, and deeply moving portrait of mother-daughter connection, agency, and the small but seismic moments that shape us. We spoke to Flore about the power of vulnerability on screen, the beauty of everyday gestures, and what it was like sharing creative control with her daughter.
Hi Flore! How are you, and what’s bringing you joy lately—creatively or otherwise?
I’m going very well thank you! I’m in my element when I’m drowning in projects and that’s the case of the moment. I also find solace in bringing up big subjects through intimate moments, minute details, and fleeting personal experiences. This is what I have done with my latest film and this is how I approach every single project I start whether it’s photography or filmmaking. If I feel that I’ve captured a beautiful meaningful fleeting moment it brings me an incredible joy.
A Little Bag for Me is such a personal and tender collaboration between you and your daughter Léonore. What inspired you both to turn this moment in her life into a documentary?
I was at film school (AFTRS, the Australian national film school) when this project was born. My first idea was very different from what it ended up becoming. In my job as a photographer, I often have very deep conversations with my clients or the participants of a project. Aiming a lens at someone is a bizarre act. It creates very intimate interactions. Often the theme of our female body comes up. Period pain, birth, perimenopause… I have shared and heard many stories about women’s first day of their periods. In more cases than not, I realised that it’s been a pretty traumatic day for many of us. That surprised me because I thought I was a rare case for my generation, women who went through puberty in the 80s and after. So, I decided to make a film where I would interview people with a vast array of experiences on the first day of their period. Then the project moved into a much more intimate conversation. I realised that my 11-year-old daughter was at the age where I should have a very thorough talk about puberty. I asked her if it was OK to talk about these subjects in front of a camera giving her complete veto rights on what we would share. I also decided to give her a camera so she could film me back. The idea was to give her agency in a very imbalanced mother daughter power dynamic. We decided to interview family members and she was in charge of the questions. The film is a mix of our very intimate conversations and her quite hilarious interactions with her immediate family. It looks personal, natural, and tender because it was. Léonore is very used to seeing me film life. She doesn’t really see the camera anymore.
Your work often explores the sensuality of everyday gestures. How did you approach capturing the messy, funny, and emotional landscape of puberty with that same tenderness?
I didn’t want to construct anything. I wanted to show it as it is. Of course, as soon as you frame something with a lens, you only see that little frame and not the 360° around it. I tried to mix our intimate and tender moments with images of our environment to situate the action. You can see my daughter’s horrified reactions when she realises the details of having her periods, inserting a tampon or a menstrual cup. These emotional reactions can only be captured when they happen for real, otherwise it’s a work of fiction that involves actors. As it’s often the case in family documentaries, the camera was always very close, and I grabbed it when I thought that our conversation could be interesting for our film. It all happened in the natural flow of life.
There’s a beautiful slowness to your visual style. How did you use that rhythm to shape the narrative and emotional beats of A Little Bag for Me?
It’s funny you’re saying that because I wanted the film to be a lot slower than it is. I’m the type of cinephile who can watch 10 minutes of a tree in the wind in a Chantal Akerman’s film. I was conscious of the limited attention span of current audiences and chopped up moments in smaller ones during the editing phase. I’m glad they’re still appearing slow to you.
What was it like directing alongside Léonore, did she surprise you in the process?
Yes, she did! At first, she took it as a game. When we started to talk about making a film she was 10 years old. We started filming when she was 11. Slowly she took her job as a co-director very seriously. When she disagreed with one of my ideas she offered an alternative. I had no idea that this film could get us even closer than we were. We formed a team and discussed our project together and with the rest of the team as you would in a professional crew. She’s now approaching 14 and is very involved in the distribution of the film. We have been to most festival premieres and screenings. She’s taken part of directors Q&A’s. It has been a lot of fun. She’s asking what’s the next project now!
Can you share a little bit about your first period experience?
I share this moment in the film. To summarise it, I was 14 on an exchange student trip to Germany when it happened in a foreign home with a foreign family. My mother had completely forgotten to warn me or explain anything. I found myself covered in blood thinking I was dying. It was a very traumatic experience. In our culture blood often means murder or injury. I had no idea that it was natural. I resented my mom a lot for this fear.
When Léonore heard about this, she immediately understood the goal of our film. Simply asking a question, how can we make children more comfortable discussing puberty? And if the film can help do that, it would be such a brilliant mother-daughter achievement.
The film will be showing at Melbourne Documentary Film Festival—congrats! Where is it showing and where can people get tickets?
It’s showing on Sunday 27 July at 12.20pm at Cinema Nova.
What do you hope parents, kids, or anyone navigating big transitions take away from watching A Little Bag for Me?
It’s important to say that this film is not an object of propaganda to give people lessons or to show off how good a mother I am. On the contrary, it’s showing how “cringe” and difficult these conversations can be for parents as well as for children. It only suggests that an open conversation in a family that welcomes questions helps. When everyone feels at ease with discussing the body whether it’s a boy, girl, or any body; it makes everyone’s life much easier. The film also shows that it can be quite hilarious and endearing discussions.
It’s hard to know how or if a film can touch people’s heart. What made Léonore and I very happy is that the first clip we put on social media to promote our film’s screening in Melbourne reached 1.5 million views! It triggered really important conversations about puberty, knowledge, and parenting. If anything, that was a big win for the film and for our project.
