2026 RIIFF Filmmaker Spotlight Series: 7h53, Directed by Pénélope Rose
By Anastasia Tunberg
Pénélope Rose’s 7h53 is a cathartic and surrealist exploration of grief, love, and holding onto your inner child. The film follows separated parents Marcus and Eliza as they experience one last night together with their daughter Coco, whom they tragically lost and is back from the dead for one night– until sunrise. As the night progresses, the parents play and connect with Coco by connecting with their own inner children. Rose captures the film through a child’s perspective, and shows how the family bonds with each other through play and games. They stay present and joyful with each other, despite the tragedy that lies beneath it. The atmosphere of the film sustains the tension of losing Coco without taking away from the joy the family experiences together– darkness and whimsy exist at the same time. As it gets closer to sunrise, Marcus and Eliza have to come to terms with letting go of Coco. Rose explores the nuance of grief with these characters, and how people deal with it in many different ways. The film successfully blends many themes together: hope and fear, loss and rebirth, moving on, and growing up. Rose created a story that represents the human experience of loss, and leaves the viewers feeling connected to the characters and to their own inner child that still lives inside them.
I had the privilege of interviewing Pénélope Rose, the writer and director of 7h53.
Anastasia Tunberg: What sparked the idea for this film?
Pénélope Rose: The idea came from a dream. When I was a child I experienced the loss of my father- and the mourning took place in my dreams, because I was too young to confront it in real life. My dreams were a place where I could meet my father again. I started to understand that letting go isn’t about forgetting, it’s about allowing life to continue.
Years later, I had this idea about a little girl who comes back from the dead out of nowhere, with no reason, with a list of mischief and things she wants to do. I think it happened this way because my grief connected to my inner child. I wanted to work on the return instead of the departure of her character, because for me, it created the same rupture in reality and it allowed me to approach the loss indirectly and move around it in order to speak about it more freely. It was very funny to reverse the idea of grief– I had to connect to my inner child, so I wrote a character full of joy and playfulness.
Also, I wasn’t interested in grief itself but in the loneliness it brings. Everyone experiences grief differently. Some show their pain, and we empathize more when the grief is visible. But on the contrary, others seem to move forward. It can be a misunderstanding because they might just fill the void. Unfortunately, these people are often left alone because we assume they are stronger.
AT: Describe the filmmaking process as a writer/director- what was that experience like for you?
PR: The visual language was probably one of our biggest areas of research. I needed the audience to enter the fairy tale immediately. So the first person I worked with, before the script was even finished, was the DOP, Martin de Chabaneix. We really wanted to focus on creating a place between a dream and a nightmare. That’s why the cinematographic style isn’t naturalistic– the moonlight is green, and the shadows of the trees almost become monsters. With our production designer, Pauline Le Goff, we gradually transformed the house into what feels like an ogre’s lair; we wanted this transformation to embody what grief can become when we hold onto it. Then, with the sound designer Clément Barda, we extended that idea through sound by blending the actors’ voices with the breath of animals to create a sense of wild, instinctive joy. The composer, Mylène Ballion, created a lullaby, which we wanted to sound like a memory. We sent it to the team way before shooting so they could sing and immerse themselves in it together rather than reading it from the script.
During the shooting of the film, I imagined a game based on the script, so we could play it at dinner with the whole team. Everyone brought their sensitivity and intelligence to the set so we could create a very trusting, intimate, and respectful atmosphere. It was one of the most important things for me to create on set, because we were working with a very young actress on a complicated subject, so I wanted to make sure she would feel safe.
For me, play is a psychological strategy: it is one of the most sophisticated tools of our mind– almost a trick of the unconscious. As children, we instinctively play to understand the world and make sense of what overwhelms us. I think adults often lose that ability, while it remains one of the most powerful ways to bypass our defenses. That is why both the story and the filmmaking process were built around play. Paradoxically, this approach made us incredibly efficient. Despite shooting entirely at night and under difficult conditions, we finished every scene on time, while preserving the trust and freedom that the film needed.
The filmmaking process was a process of finding joy in something so delicate. I always think of the quote: “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about, so be kind always.” The process was beautiful, like a poem– it was listening to each other with silence. Sometimes we would play out the scenes without dialogue, so we could listen to each other. It was the best experience of my life– I had such a great team.
AT: Before you wrote 7h53 and directed it, you were an actress. What was that like transitioning from acting to the writer/director role?
PR: I literally became an actress because I was writing stories when I was a child. As a solitary child, I amused myself by writing scripts, playing all the characters, shooting, and editing. It was just my favourite thing to do, a space of freedom and fun. It wasn’t about making money or planning a career, it was my place to be safe, joyful, and free.
As a child actress, I had the chance to be on the sets. I liked “playing” the characters as a child, and the filmmaking process and cinema became like a “game” that I could play. So today, becoming a director feels like a natural evolution and a relief to express myself through this complex and beautiful language. I love being an actress, and I will be an actress all of my life– but I am an actress because I am a writer. If I don’t write, I am not myself.
I think being on set as a director, my experience as an actress helped me to create an atmosphere where you can find a place of safety. When you are acting you feel exposed and vulnerable, so it is important to feel free and respected in this place where everybody is looking at you. I made sure to value the actors on set and create that safe space because I understand what it feels like to be that vulnerable.
AT: Speaking of acting, how did you find the actors/actresses you wanted to work with for this film?
PR: I had the chance to work with actors Guillaume Duhesme (Marcus) and Alexandra Cismondi (Elisa) as an actress before. I knew what it felt like to work with them– they are very kind, generous, and patient, which is very important when making a short film. They are so talented because they can be creative every time, no matter if they are tired or running out of time. Because of this, I knew I wanted to work with these actors before finishing the script.
With Angèle Roméo’s character, Coco, it was a little more complicated because Coco is a child. We met a lot of child actors– but one day I heard about this little girl who was in a theatre production at the time. Everybody talked about her and told me I should meet her, so I did, and cast her. She literally lit up the place with her talent, and she is so smart. She wanted to work so much on the character, and at that age, it was fascinating. You can meet a child that loves to play and understands the script, but she is so wise and observant. She was always listening to everything on set. I was very moved to meet her, and I am still in contact with her and wish to work with her again in the future.
AT: What do you hope the viewers of the film take away from it when they leave the cinema? What do you hope will stay with them?
PR: I hope the film can remind us how important it is to listen to one another. I also want them to connect to their inner child. I want them to leave the cinema feeling a little bit of that sense of fantasy, and wondering what their favorite list of mischief might be if they had that one night that it could all come true.
In the lullaby, there is this sentence: “When a single tear drowns a field of flowers, we must make our mother, our father, our elders, sing refrains and verses.” For me, it means that sometimes the only way to survive the deepest pain is to become ten years old again and find the joy of eating an entire jar of jam.
Catch 7h53 at Rhode Island International Film Festival’s Opening Night on Tuesday, August 4th 2026, at 7:00 pm at the Providence Performing Arts Center.
