France. A night at the beginning of the 1970s. Lucie, a little girl missing for over a year, is discovered wandering by the side of a country road. Near catatonic, she can say nothing about what has happened to her. The cops quickly find the place in which she's been incarcerated - a disused slaughterhouse. Every indication is that she never once left the empty, freezing room in which she was imprisoned. Filthy, starving, dehydrated, the child's body nonetheless bears no traces of sexual abuse - this was no pedophile abduction, but something far stranger. What happened in that icy room? And how did Lucie escape?

BD: Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. After all of the positive buzz from Cannes, are you nervous about people possibly being overhyped for the film?

PL: It's really beyond my control. Anytime a film creates hype (and it's something you can't plan), it has the risk to disappoint some viewers. There's really nothing I can do about it. The only thing I know is that I put all my efforts and all my honesty in that movie. I also know that MARTYRS is not supposed to please everybody. It's the nature of the project itself, and, according to me, the very nature of horror.

BD: MARTYS isn't quite as gory as INSIDE, but it definitely is a much tougher film to watch. What were you aiming for?

PL: I had no other purpose in mind than telling a story I felt connected to, doing a film I had faith in, and doing it with all my heart. When I was writing MARTYRS, I couldn't see another way to talk about all the things that were surrounding me. On a metaphorical way, horror was the perfect tool to react to the feeling I had, like a sad intuition, that the world we're living in right now is a brutal and unfair one. I mean, very brutal. It seems that the cynism and the power of the winners has killed everything. It seems that our urban societies are more than ever driven by the forces of jungle laws, by rules created by the strongest and the dominant people. I'm not saying anything original about injustice of our times, but it was strong enough in me to create the necessity of doing that film. The system creates a lot of losers, a lot of suffering weak people I feel very close to and MARTYRS in its way tells about them. So I would say that the horror genre is a way to talk about things that preoccupy me a lot. As a fan, I always took the films from the masters Argento, Carpenter, Polanski and dozens of other great artists as their own personal visions of life. That's why I liked them humanly too. And that's why I love horror so much.

BD: Do you personally like gory films or would you rather watch something that's tough to get through?

PL: For me, gore is a way, not the purpose. Violence and blood in films, like in any other art, is one of the thousands tools we have at our disposal when we create something. It's a language, it gives special emotions, it can be used a lot of ways. But yes, I love the esthetic of special effects and I feel closer to prosthetics and mechanical stuff, done live onstage, than CG. I come from a generation who fell in love with the works of genius such as Rob Bottin, Rick Baker and all the wizards who brought their visions to the screen. I mean, the first time I saw John Carpenter's THE THING, I just couldn't believe it... the same when being confronted to my first vision of Darkness, in Ridley Scott's LEGEND. I had dreamt about the Devil, as a young occidental child I imagined him to be red with a horn and a tail, and, suddenly, a film showed him to me - for real. It's a primitive image that I will never forget.

BD: A lot of people don't realize how hard it is to make a scary movie, how much preparation did it take and how difficult was it to achieve this in MARTYS?

PL: Thank God, I did not go through a never ending development hell process. I was very lucky to be supported by a producer, Richard Grandpierre, who's very gifted when it comes to finding the money to have a special and unusual project financed; the same with Wild Bunch, my French distributors. They love genre films and try to help them as soon as they like the script. We, the young French directors, owe these guys a lot. They try to open the French market to different kinds of movies. Because, like any other European country, our film industry is asphyxiated by national comedies financed by television. I can understand that, from a strictly commercial point of view, but, as a genre fan, I really don't connect to that "familial" idea of cinema and wanna be able to propose something else. That said, MARTYRS was not easy to do. The shooting was an exhaustive experience. The budget was very restricted, so was the time... it was a battle... every sequence was hard to achieve, dealing with a lot of special effects... Brian Yuzna, I think it's him, once said "if special effects were easy to do, it would be called ‘normal effects!’ “ But at least I was totally free. Even if we shot the film in Canada for economical reasons, it was a French production, so I had no executive on my back trying to make me change things, trying to make a more "acceptable" film. MARTYRS, as you saw it, is exactly my cut.

BD: Obviously we don't want to give away the finale, but what inspired the concept behind the film?

PL: To be honest, I found the film by listening to myself... I was not very well at time... for personal reasons I felt really lonely... I hated my state and I hated everything that came from society... I couldn't stand turning on the television anymore, I felt assaulted by everything coming from the mass media and the public opinion. I saw lies and manipulation in more or less everything they were saying and showing to the audience. Once again, I see our time as a very violent one. Everything seems to be under the control of personal interest and money. Human relationships are more and more driven by the market - it's unbearable. So horror is the perfect way for me to express these things... MARTYRS is as desperate, as nihilistic and as dark as my energy when I wrote it. I realized recently that, in a way, my film is not far away from saying: The occidental world we live in is falling apart... very close to its own end...

BD: The one thing that I was really impressed by was that the "twists" were part of the development of the story and not there to make or break the film. Was this a conscious effort or did it just come with the story?

PL: Yes, because beyond my personal dark energy, I wanted the film to be really suspenseful. I wanted a regular audience to be involved in my world through the archetypes of the genre. I would say that, at first, the film is a mystery thing. I tried to make the audience unable to guess what's gonna happen in the next minute. Writing it was like a game but without irony nor post-modernism... without dishonest twists neither. It's a straight serious film in tone. There's absolutely no fun in it. I wanted to surprise even the hardcore horror fan by playing with them... I wanted the film to escape from any kind of formula, so it would become a very unsafe cinematic experience and a strong one for everyone... I don't know if I have achieved that but it was the intention.

BD: The film seems inspired by films like ROSEMARY'S BABY, HOSTEL and numerous other films, what other movies or filmmakers inspired this project?

PL: I like HOSTEL a lot as a fan, I think it's a very clever exploitation piece, well written and superbly directed. But I don't see any real connection between HOSTEL and MARTYRS. The projects are just very different. I don't see any connection to ROSEMARY’S BABY either to be honest, even if, of course I think Polanski's piece is a definitive masterpiece. No the only conscious influences that I have in mind are Zulawski's POSSESSION and Argento's TENEBRAE. I showed theses films to my actresses and my crew. Both of it share a very European mood and a pessimistic vision of "urban societies", very far away from the "American Gothic" feeling and aesthetics. I think it's the case of my film too. The horror is shown in a kind of white, daylight, clinical way, not through darkness, shadows and spider webs if you know what I mean...

BD: What's your religious background and did it have any inspiration in MARTYRS?

PL: I was born and raised Catholic... But it was more to please my grandmothers... I mean my parents are very doubting people in terms of religious faith... but, yes, definitely, the imagery of Christianity and the inner themes of it had a strong influence on me even if I don't believe in it... it's something that will be in me until the day I die... I don't believe in conversion nor in syncretism... I'll be forever the little Frenchy boy who was told about Jesus and how this guy took our sins for himself! I know everything about sacrifice, guiltiness and ecstasy of suffering and I regret it a lot because, without this shit, I'd be a much quieter peaceful person... but maybe I would be less creative too... it's a tough question...

BD: What are your thoughts on empowering female roles in French films, which also appears in your film?

PL: Women in the fantastic and horror culture. It's a huge subject too... I can only say that, as I was a teenager, watching Mia Farrow short haired in THE HAUNTING OF JULIA (FULL CIRCLE) (when will they release a fucking good DVD of it!), one of the most melancholic ghost film ever down, and my favorite one, just made everything. Her face, the strangeness of her moves, the way her eyes were seeing things beyond the limits of reality just blew my mind. It was a full world in itself and told me a lot about my relationships to women. Again, it's a matter of "primitive image". It's a feeling, a starting point, I would not like to definite it... David Cronenberg once said "I like to work with women because, as a straight guy, women belong to my favorite gender..." Isn't it the perfect way to sum it up?

BD: Do you have any thoughts about US vs French filmmaking? Why everything in the US is "cookie cutter" and everything from France right now seems to be not only original, yet frightening?

PL: Because we the frog eaters are just starving! You have to get it: for years it was just impossible to do genre films in France. I mean ten years ago only, MARTYRS would have been impossible to finance. So I think our frustration filled us with a strong obsessive energy... plus, directors are very free in France, they have the final cut. Legaly the producer CAN'T fire the director; artists are very protected for the worst and the best. The best is that it allows a film to be a more personal vision... but don't be fooled by your exotic US point of view: Here in my country, it's still a hell to do a horror piece. A lot of people hate the genre and the majority of French financers think it should be left to American to produce such films...

BD: Dimension Films completely screwed up the film INSIDE for the US release, are you nervous that they might re-cut your film for different retailers?

PL: I really don't know what the Weinsteins are gonna do with MARTYRS. I was told that the film shocked them; they found the violence too graphic... It's still too soon to have an idea. But I know for sure that the film will be UNCUT on DVD, so I feel ok. I know that horror fans will be able to see it the way I did it. I haven't met the Weinsteins yet, never talked to them. Who knows?

BD: How did working on Sainte Ange help prepare you for MARTYRS? Did you learn from past mistakes?

PL: Of course I learnt a lot. SAINT ANGE was my first film, I had a lot of things to prove to myself and the film is over controlled in terms of frame, light, style... It's a referential cold film even if I'm still very proud of it since I love its atmosphere. In a way, SAINT ANGE was my "teenage project", it's the result of all my dreams I had for years as a cinephile. On MARTYRS I felt much more free to experiment, I did not over prepared it, didn't do any storyboard nor shot list, which, sometimes, wasn't well understood by the Canadian crew. I wanted reality to interconnect more with the shooting process... Ok I wanted to do a spectacular horror film with a lot of special effects and a challenging imagery, but made in a kind of European "cinema vérité" feeling... I think it allows the result to be less self-conscious. It gives a very organic touch to the story, everything seems to happen "live", it not over stylized and I'm very happy about that. All the more as it was scary for me to use such a method since my nature a set is to control everything. I consider MARTYRS, on a professional way, as a very rewarding experience. Can't wait to shoot the next one!

BD: What are you working on next? Another horror film? What type of film will it be (gory, scary etc)?

PL: I've been recently approached by a French producer for a very exciting project. It'll be more "thriller" oriented. I have just started to work on the screenplay. It's too soon to tell. I just can't wait to show MARYRS to a true audience and see the reactions. I assume it'll be as extreme as the film.

BD: Any last words for the fans?

PL: I just would like to tell them that horror is a beauty and I understand their devotion to the genre so well... because I feel the same. I hope my film won't disappoint them. I hope they'll forget everything they've read on MARTYRS before entering the screening room, and that, whatever their opinion of the film is, they'll have the feeling to live a strong and powerful experience.