Gentle Monster writer-director Marie Kreutzer and star Léa Seydoux took to the stage at Deadline’s Contenders London event to discuss the journey behind their Cannes drama.

Seydoux plays Lucy, an experimental pianist who moves with her beloved but panic attack-liable husband Philip (Laurence Rupp) and young son to a rural farmhouse in Bavaria. Life seems swell until a special unit of big-city police led by Detective Kühn (Jella Haase) swoop in and seize one of Philip’s devices. As expected, they find and seize thousands of images of child pornography — and his double life is exposed. Catherine Deneuve plays Lucy’s mother in the feature.

The project has a striking resonance for Kreutzer. In 2022, the Austrian director released Corsage, starring Vicky Krieps and Florian Teichtmeister. The following year, Teichtmeister was arrested and pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography: 76,000 files spread over 22 devices. He received a suspended sentence, which outraged many Austrians horrified by the crime committed by a prominent cultural figure. Inevitably, Kreutzer’s film was tarnished by association and even withdrawn from some cinemas.

How did that experience shape Gentle Monster?

Kreutzer explained today that she “started working on Gentle Monster in 2020, after reading an article in a German newspaper about a ring of criminals being uncovered in Germany. So when all that happened with the actor, I knew so much about the issue, and it was a very disturbing coincidence. I thought, ‘I can’t make the film anymore’, because it will always be connected to an actor, but sometime later, I realized it’s maybe more of a reason to make the film and to confront it and not run away from it.”

Seydoux described why she was drawn to the film: “I loved the script. I thought it was well written and and very subtle, because the subject is obviously a tough subject, and it’s not that easy to make a film about a subject like this one. I love the fact that it was told through the woman’s perspective, and that it’s through her eyes that the the story formed. It’s not through the victim’s perspective or through the perpetrator’s perspective. I thought that was extremely interesting because I was able to to express very contradictory feelings and a large range of different emotions.”

She described the revelation at the heart of the movie as “a horrible thing” that creates “an earthquake inside” her character.

The actress said that among the most challenging practical aspects of the film were speaking German and the concert scenes where she has to play the piano.

Kreutzer agreed that the concert scene was among the most difficult to capture: “The big concert scene was a really hard thing for for both Lea and me because she’s a very intuitive actress, which I love, and I’m a very intuitive director, and less technical. I know what I need to know, but I don’t want any marks for the actors, I want them to move freely, so don’t plan shots in millimeters. That’s not how I do it. And so when you’re shooting a scene like that, you have to do that. It was a day where I felt like it was out of my hands and I can’t really do anything and everyone’s really stressed.”

Kreutzer also described a “wild day” when Seydoux, who doesn’t drive, had to drive a car in reverse with a child in the back seat.

Netflix acquired the film as Cannes was wrapping up in May and opens it October 30 in limited release before it starts streaming on November 18. Alexander Glehr and Johanna Scherz are the producers.