“Are we able to replace what’s really missing in their lives, which is affection?”: Fred Baillif on La Mif and the social care system

In a similar vein to Laurent Cantet’s The Class and Sarah Gavron’s much-lauded Rocks comes writer-director Fred Baillif’s La Mif. With a title that is slang for family, the film immerses its audience in the make-shift family dynamic that forms between a group of teenage girls and their community workers in a residential care home in Geneva, with all the tensions and tantrums that brings.

Self-taught filmmaker Baillif was himself a social worker, and his knowledge and experience of the social care system imbue his movie with an uncanny edge of realism. In fact, the lines between fact and fiction blur as his ensemble cast of non-professional actors each bring some of their own personal histories to their characters. Full of adolescent outbursts, heart-rending recollections of neglect and abuse, blunt chats about sex and romance and complex relationships between the kids and their carers, La Mif bristles with affecting authenticity.

The Upcoming sat down to chat with Baillif, who shared his reflections on working with non-professional actors and shooting in a residential care home in Geneva, blending fact and fiction and the questions he says it raises over the social care system. He told us: “La Mif is a slang word in French. It means family and it’s actually the word that the girls who I’ve worked with, who come from a children’s home, it’s the word they use to talk about their experience in care. But I feel it’s kind of ironic and desperate in a way because the question for them, but also for me as a filmmaker with the story, is: ‘Are we able, as a society, as a system, to replace what’s really missing in their lives, which is affection?'” Watch the rest of the interview below.

Sarah Bradbury

La Mif is released in select UK cinemas on 25^th February 2022.

Watch the trailer for La Mif here: