He was already bleeding. Franck had gone back down the hill. He wanted to climb the hill opposite this time but was battling with the brambles that stopped him from either going any further or turning back. When he had arrived back at the house, he had changed and immediately wanted to go up into the woods, convinced that he would find a signal there. However, the plants on the slope were prickly and dense, making it impossible to get anywhere. What’s more, his decision to wear shorts was proving disastrous, as the holly bushes and brambles tore at his legs, wrapping themselves around him as if trying to ensnare him. He could no longer go back down, nor could he carry on going up. After eight hours on the road, he no longer had the energy to fight, especially not for a tiny bit of signal.

Life is a constant logistical balancing act, and Franck knew that better than anyone. The role of a producer comes down to this – constantly finding solutions, calming fears, meeting demands, settling day-to-day problems and invoices, managing the whims and mistakes of others, being a father figure to directors as well as to actors. To be a producer you must always be strong, or else pretend to be, but he had no desire for this kind of trial in the first few hours of his holiday.

He would never be able to spend an evening without internet access. On shoots in remote areas, crews were willing to make all sorts of concessions – they were prepared to go for weeks without seeing their children, even if they had joint custody, to go without a bistro or casino, comfort or running water, but no actor or technician would ever agree to stay somewhere without a signal. Never. Anything but that! He groaned out loud, with nothing and nobody to hear him. He was on the verge of crying out. He thought to himself that gone were the days of Fitzcarraldo and its boat, lost in the jungle. That was the image that came to him as he found himself trapped in brambles that wound their long stems around him. Fitzcarraldo, a film that was emblematic of the madness you need to direct one. He looked at the unassailable slope in front of him, thinking it would be better to abandon it. Then, twenty metres ahead, in the middle of the tangle of leaves and bushy branches, he thought he could see a shape moving, a brown creature running towards the right. He had too much sweat in his eyes to see properly. Yet he heard a sound, the sound of an animal slipping through the bushes, moving away. He did not like this place.