Jérémie Attard Turns To Three ALEXA Minis For ‘La Petite Dernière’

Cinematographer Jérémie Attard reunites with actor-director Hafsia Herzi for their fourth collaboration on La Petite Dernière, an adaptation of Fatima Daas’s novel that screened in the Official Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, where Nadia Melliti won Best Actress.

After their previous project, Herzi invited Attard aboard at an unusually early stage. He read the novel, then the script, and began filming extended casting call-backs. He shot exploratory sequences not necessarily in the screenplay to test performance dynamics, trying different focal lengths and aspect ratios and sending light grading passes so Herzi could evaluate what worked on screen, independent of on-set impressions. Because roles were still fluid, these sessions helped shape both casting and visual approach.

Herzi, who dislikes previsualisation and floor plans, prefers to preserve spontaneity and “trust the real”, often folding elements from her actors into the script—the character Fatima’s love of football and Ji-Na’s painting among them. By their fourth film together, Attard says they share a shorthand, sometimes referencing sequences from earlier collaborations to calibrate staging, numbers of characters and movement. Herzi’s touchstones included Andrea Arnold and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Les filles d’Olfa, with its bold colour dominance and painterly references, as well as her own on-set experiences with the Ronin and Steadicam on Le Ravissement and Borgo. Attard, for his part, discussed Celine Song’s Past Lives with the colourist for its beautifully rendered warm night scenes, but they avoided moodboards or carrying reference frames on set to keep choices fresh.

Working with a largely first-time cast did not concern Attard. Having operated on Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub, My Love, where the ensemble was mostly non-professional, and on Herzi’s earlier films, he’s accustomed to building a discreet, comfortable environment. A longer casting period and substantial filmed tests for La Petite Dernière also proved invaluable, helping the team understand how performers came across on camera and giving everyone confidence when the shoot began.

Herzi’s staging is rooted in multi-camera coverage, so Attard deployed three ALEXA Minis across the production. Dialogue may be tightly written, he notes, but scenes can take unexpected turns with non-professional actors; three cameras help catch unrepeatable moments. With Jeremy Renault on camera B and Tom Houguenague on camera C, each operator brought a distinct sensibility, providing Herzi with angles and ideas she wouldn’t necessarily get from a single camera. Longer takes allowed actors to live through the moment together, avoiding multiple resets from different axes that might break performance flow.

Rental house TSF proposed either the Raptor or the Mini for the full run. Comparative tests led Attard to the ALEXA Mini, which he found better in the highlights and, crucially, a known quantity: robust, reliable, easy for assistants, straightforward to accessorise, stable in colour and free of firmware headaches. In his words: "Comme on tourne beaucoup, à trois caméras, avec des prises assez longues, c’est important d’avoir une caméra en laquelle on a confiance." — Jérémie Attard, directeur de la photographie.

Lighting strategy was designed to support this freedom. Attard began by reading the natural light of each location, using it as a base to reinforce or stabilise, and front-loaded as much prelight as possible. That way, Herzi could roll from take to take without delays, and the team could maintain continuity across multiple angles. With three cameras and two boom operators in often small spaces, source placement had to anticipate bodies and shadows. Attard typically “surrounded” the actors with back or side light, placing the crew on the opposite side of the axis to add contrast; whenever he strayed from this logic, matching shots and takes became markedly harder.

He also collaborated closely with the production designer and costume designer on a restrained colour dramaturgy: red was reserved for scenes of encounter and discovery—in sets and wardrobe—and purposefully withdrawn from others. Though wary of being heavy-handed, Attard says the guideline, used selectively, helped harmonise the film’s look and carry the emotion of key sequences while staying true to a naturalistic palette.

On looks and grading, Attard was keen to try new look-development tools, but co-production logistics—grading in Germany and moving across several labs—made relying on a specific plugin impractical. Colourist Dirk Meier helped steer around that limitation. To mark the passage of seasons, the team shot three quasi-documentary days in Paris in February—largely non-dialogue material with Melliti and other actors—yielding around 150 frames Attard tested with various plugins and LUTs. Meier provided detailed feedback, then built a bespoke on-set LUT combining their preferred attributes with his own toolset.

In final colour, they remained close to that LUT. Attard initially considered pushing towards a more pronounced texture, but he and Meier agreed that their preparation choices held for the finished film; forcing a further shift would have felt artificial. The result strikes, in Attard’s view, a balanced synthesis: filmic-leaning contrast and colour compression paired with modern skin-tone variety and a contemporary overall feel.

La Petite Dernière’s selection at Cannes 2025—and Melliti’s Best Actress win—underscored the approach. For Attard and Herzi, the combination of early camera exploration, three-camera coverage, thoughtful prelighting and a coherent yet light-touch colour strategy proved integral to capturing the story’s spontaneity and singularity.

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