French screen legend Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne, an aging renowned actress, in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth (La vérité), his follow-up to the 2019 Palme d’or winner and Golden Globes nominee Shoplifters.   The film explores the complicated relationship between Fabienne and her visiting daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), who resents the rose-colored version of the past presented in her mother’s just-published memoirs.  Secrets, hidden truths, buried grudges are revealed as the mother-daughter duo tries to repair and even heal damaged family dynamics, with unexpected results.The project began 14years ago when Kore-eda approached the two actresses whom he had admired for a long time and who had never worked together. “They both represent the history of French cinema,” said the director. Initially intended as a play, he rewrote The Truth as a movie, specifically for these actresses. “I asked them about what acting truly is and it was their words that nourished the script and brought it to life.” The film was shot entirely in Paris and Kore-eda, who doesn’t speak French and had never filmed outside Japan, admits that “it was a daring challenge,” adding that “the important thing when making a film is not to speak the same language but to share the same vision.”Directing an icon like Catherine Deneuve proved to be for him a memorable collaboration. “Having my movie in her filmography is for me both a source of pride and anxiety”, he confesses. “But on set she was cheerful, adorable and deliciously mischievous. She has a kind of lightness in her and a rhythm and musicality in her delivery.”The star herself was “thrilled to have worked with Kore-eda. It was an original and complex experience in the way we had to communicate,” she said. Deneuve also insists that the self-absorbed, imperious, and haughtily opinionated Fabienne is not at all like her. “Of course, in every character you inevitably put a bit of your own, and this one is no exception, but at the core, she is an actress who is very different from me, from my own world and my relationship with my own daughter.”Binoche was elated to get to finally share the screen with her. “Donkey Skin is a movie that is dear to me,” she explains. “Sharing so much intimacy through this film was vivid and precious consecration.”For Kore-eda, it was crucial that The Truth be “a film not only serious but light-hearted, where drama and comedy coexist, like they do in real life.”  During the making of it, he confesses that he kept asking himself the same questions: “What makes a family? Truth or lies? And how would you choose between a cruel truth and a kind lie? I hope everyone who sees it will have the opportunity to find his or hers answers.”