Me : “A movie! Out of my silly little story! The first thing that sprang to my mind was : alright, hang on, how are they going to make rats act like I described in the book? I mean, they are smart animals but… Nevermind. I still don’t know exactly how it happened, but I agreed to the idea and next thing I knew, it was a thing.”

Host : “So how did it go? Did you find genius rats or something?”

Me : “Or something. We went to a pet shop and bought four male rats, two small grey ones and two big white, and trained them as best we could. We had to modify the scripts a little, but we managed. You see, we had decided to actually film two movies : one in French and one in English. But we had special-effects people with both teams, so it went better than I expected.”

Host: "Do you have pictures of these rats? I'd love to see them!"

Me: "I don't have pictures sadly, but here's a drawing of the French duo. Cute, aren't they?"

Host : “Adorable! Now wait, let me react on what you said before... Why two movies? You know there’s a thing called subtitles, right?”

Me : “Well, the idea was that the film crew and the actors should be people suffering from or recovered of PTSD, depression or other mental health issues. People that knew what the stakes were, and what they were talking about. The real purpose was healing and raising awareness, remember? What better way to do that than casting those who are at the heart of the issue? And since some people from the USA had reached out to me with the exact same idea, it was decided that we should just play along and make one for each country that asked. So, since France and the USA were the only ones at that time, two movies.”

Host : “But how could that work? Did you film simultaneously? Or did you make one after the other?”

Me : “We filmed both at the same places and times. We flew the American team over to France so the two movies would look as much alike as possible, and because we had already picked out favorite locations. It was cheaper and faster to fly them here, too. We had a lot of fun, to be honest, and sometimes one crew made appearances on the other’s scenes. It was a complete hair-pulling mess, but the laughter that engulfed us all for that time was worth it. Some of us had never been as happy and relaxed in their entire life!”

Host : “Where exactly did you film it?”

Me : “There were two different locations. The first was a forest near where I live, since the village where my main character lives is in the middle of woods. The second is in a desert-like place more to the north, where we managed to rent the rights to filming for a few weeks. It was really short, considering none of us was a professional actor or anything.”

Host : “I imagine it must have been hell! How did it go?"

Me : "It went surprisingly well, we were organised and knew what we wanted. The actors were really focused on the message they wanted to get through. We also had a therapist with each team and ex-military, ex-firefighters and the likes agreed to train us and to play a small role. Their presence helped a lot, and they wanted to remind people that these professions face traumatic situations as their job... These guys and gals were amazing and trained to deal with people like us. We did have a few incidents, like panic attacks and fainting, but not as much as you would expect considering the circumstances. And these are so much a part of our lives that it didn't really interfere with the progress.”