Marguerite theorem (Le Théorème de Marguerite) by French director Anna Novion starring Ella Rumpf as Marguerite, a brilliant mathematics student at a top French university working on solving Goldbach’s conjecture for her thesis. The film premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, where its producer Anne-Sophie Delserries won the CST Young Film Technician award for truly immersing us in the world of a tortured genius who sees mathematics everywhere as he goes through a period of doubt and comes -of age. Anna Novion answered a few of our questions about the film and this one-of-a-kind story about a rare female PhD in mathematics. struggling to pay rent in Paris.
What inspired you to make this film or tell this story?
Anna Novion: When I start a film, I always start with a feeling, an emotion. I thought about the sense of confinement and displacement I experienced when I was about 20 years old. I was sick and had to stay at home for six months. When I recovered, I felt very out of touch with the world, with young people my age, with their carefree attitude. When I tried to convey what I had felt, I thought of Ivy League schools where young people operate in a vacuum and are cut off from the outside world. That’s how I met mathematicians and had an instrumental meeting with Ariane Mezard, a great French mathematician.
“When a movie started, I always start with feelingemotion.”
That meeting completely directed the writing of the film and took it to a place I didn’t expect. The way she talked about her work sparked something in me because she talked about everything that drives me in my work: the passion, the necessity, the difficulty, the persistence, the relentlessness… I realized that a real parallel could be drawn between mathematics and artistic creativity. What connects mathematics and filmmaking is risk and passion, which means that sometimes we are willing to work for years without knowing if our work will be finished. It became a very personal film that provoked my relationship with creation.
Did you always have a female mathematician in mind for the main character, or is Marguerite based on a real person?
I think Marguerite is a mix of Ariane Mezard and me. Ariane Mezard’s stories inspired me a lot. She was the best and only girl in her class. I also wanted to tell the story of what it’s like to be a woman in a male environment. Even in my profession, I’ve felt the pressure to feel like an exception and you have to prove that you belong. So Marguerite sees herself as something of an anomaly and feels this competition all the more because she is the only woman.