Mike Mills, director of "Our children's souls": "In Hollywood, I'm off topic!"

The 56 -year -old American director likes to shoot films with small budgets, but carried by stars.This time, Joaquin Phoenix, who embodies an uncle forced to take care of his nephew.The filmmaker returns to the creation of this personal film.

When we ask Mike Mills what is his place in the American cinema industry, the director of our children of children (in theaters since January 26) has an ironic response and a disillusioned nothing: "I am aDinosaur, a threatened species.I do not make superproductions, but I do not turn on small mowed budgets.In short, I am off topic!I don't consider myself an "independent" filmmaker - a marketing term that I don't like, and who doesn't mean anything.In Hollywood, you are described as "indie" when you work with strangers for a handful of dollars, apart from union rules.Me, I like to turn with stars.And the economy of my films depends on it: it is not the interest or the quality of my scenarios that attracts investors, but the attractiveness of my castings.»»

After Tilda Swinton and Keanu Reeves for Difficult Obscur Age (2005), his first feature filmed at 39, after Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer (Beginners, 2009), after Annette Bening (the magnificent and too little seen 20th Century Women, 2016), this is the flawless commitment of Joaquin Phoenix, surrounded by his second Oscar for best actor for Joker, which allowed the Californian filmmaker to find the funds for our souls of children.A project just as personal as his three previous films, but with a complete change in point of view: while Mike Mills paid tribute to his father assuming his homosexuality in Beginners, then to his feminist mother in 20th Century Women, heThis time wonders about his relationship with his own son.