Portrait de Ludmilla en Nina Simone

She is a figure of tragedy, a statue that sings. When she stares at the audience at the start of concerts, everyone feels watched, accused, she imposes silence, dread. Then she laughs, and begins.

Nina Simone, born into a poor North Carolina family, could have become a classical concert performer, but she was black, and she mourned this blocked destiny all her life. She later became a leading figure in the civil rights struggle, and a friend of James Baldwin. There's a dual nature to her: melancholy and combative, which is reflected in her music, where the blues always shines through, even behind the commitment of hymns.

It would be a portrait of her, like a documentary, an interview. Because I like people to tell their own stories, and to tell the story not as if monologuing, but by answering questions, in a game of back and forth. I like interviews because you can tell stories of different dimensions, the big and the small, the collective and the personal.

But above all it would be a musical portrait, sung, because Nina Simone's songs are so many responses to the events of her life and her century. So, to the questions she's asked, sometimes Nina Simone, and sometimes she sings, either way it's in the same language.