Let me digress a bit here, while our story fast-forwards in the background up to the starting point our our actual film-making. I wish to make something clear : it was not as easy as I said during the interview. Very far from it, in fact.

As I have mentioned, our crew was made of people who have suffered all kinds of traumatising experiences, and the purpose of our crazy adventure was two-fold : to raise awareness to the horrible reality of such events, and to bring comfort and healing to those who have lived through it.

One of the greatest difficulty of this endeavor was to avoid at all costs any relapse, or anything that could hurt our team. Which, as you can imagine, was a little complicated. The original book deals with almost every possible cause of traumas, albeit in a fantasy and, I hope, comical kind of way, and a lot of our team members could relate to at least one of those events.

We had with us victims of brutality, which we couldn’t keep on the set while filming the fighting and whipping and torturing. We had victims of rape, of incest, of sexual abuse, that had to remain away for days while we tried to do these scenes as fast as possible and all at the same time. Some of us had been bullied, some had been hurt in their minds but not in their bodies, and all of our respective sufferings had to be taken into account when we distributed the parts.

It was really interesting, to be honest, having to organise all of this with so many possibilities of something going wrong. It brought me a hundred sleepless nights and as many headaches. I mean, how do you get people suffering from social anxiety to not panic while on set surrounded by dozens of strangers all talking at the same time? How do you keep people suffering from depression in a good enough mood to get them to smile and laugh while portraying grief?

I spent a lot of money on ice creams and chocolate cakes and all sorts of sugary stuff to maintain our troops’ morale. Good thing we did a lot of exercise, else I would have had to deal with an explosion of junk food induced obesity on top of everything else!

Thankfully, all of our respective therapists had agreed to help, either by taking a part in the movie themselves, by supervising, or by debriefing us after each day of filming. I still don’t know, to this day, how we would have managed without their help. I can’t imagine the number of breakdowns they have helped avoid.

We developed the habit of lighting incense or scented candles on the sides of the set, to help relax and focus our attention. We tried to create an environment that would be as different as possible from the one I had imagined in my book, so that when we were taking a break we wouldn’t be stuck on what we had portrayed the moments before. I helped limit the negative effects of it.

On top of everything else, we each had a totem of sorts. A little talisman, a plushie, a favorite shirt that we could have on hand when needed, to relieve the stress. And we had helpers, too. Loved ones, mostly, who had agreed to take a part in this crazy adventure and support the team through hard times. You’ll get to meet one of them soon, and his story is by far my favorite.