Remember, it was in 2010: a scandal broke out about the Mediator, an antidiabetic drug used as an appetite suppressant, which the public then discovered the harmful effects on health .

Marketed since 1976 by the laboratories Servier and withdrawn too late from the market, the Mediator would have caused several hundred deaths and thousands of hospitalizations for heart problems.

At the origin of these explosive revelations, a woman, the pneumologist Irène Frachon, alerted public authorities and the media about the dangerousness of this drug. It is his story that tells Emmanuelle Bercot in The Girl of Brest , an exciting and effective biopic on a woman launched alone in a war against the figures of the pharmaceutical industry.

A hero does modern ï

I refused to make this film at first, I found the subject too dry, not cinematic enough.

"says the director of Le tête haute. "And then I met Irene Frachon, and I changed my mind, and she had a lively and emotional way of telling her adventure, and I discovered a singular woman, who was at once unpredictable, muddled, combative, funny. I realized that I had to make a portrait of this woman rather than a fi lm on the Mediator affair. "

For nearly three years, Emmanuelle Bercot then conducted an investigation to capture the personality of Irene Frachon. She will read her archives, interview her loved ones and identify with this shadowy woman who has had to fight the lobbying and sexism of an industry trusted by men. But the problems arrived at the time of the casting:

I could find no actress in France to incarnate Irene. They were too well known, too glamorous, not enough cash. I almost abandoned the project.

On the advice of Catherine Deneuve , the director seeks abroad, and entrusts the role to the Danish Sidse Babett Knudsen, principal actress of the Borgen series, who had to take accelerated courses of French.

The choice is paying: turns intense, eruptive, angry, funny and moving, the actress vampires each shot of the film and gives body to this character of modern heroine. Finally, the French Erin Brockovich is held.

The daughter of Brest by Emanuelle Bercot, with Sidse Babett Knudeen, Benoit Magimel, released November 23.