Olin moderated the master class with Nicolas Philibert, and gave a heartfelt thank you for how much his films have meant. She opened with the question of why Philibert became a filmmaker. “Why not?” Philibert replied, to laughter from the audience.

Philibert went on to say that he never knows what his next film will be, and that he doesn’t want to know, because “I make films from my ignorance, my desire to understand.” He humorously elaborated: “In my films, I’m just trying to understand what the hell I’m doing there.” This was met with laughter from the audience, but Philibert also emphasized that he meant it in all seriousness.

Later in the master class, he continued this line of thought by explaining that he makes films to learn. The less he knows in advance, the better he feels, and that the filming itself is the research. If you go into the filming with clear ideas about what you’re going to get out of the people you meet, “then there is no encounter,” he believes. One must remain open-minded, and he is convinced that he would not have been received in the same way without this approach.

One of his films, “On the Adamant,” was filmed in a psychiatric day center floating on the Seine in the heart of Paris. When asked about the film, Philibert revealed: “I was afraid they would take one look at me and keep me.” Clips from another of his films, the film about the gorilla “Nénette,” were also shown. Philibert explained that he saw himself in Nénette, and that the film is “about questioning captivity, a film about otherness.”

In the final part of the master class, Philibert focused on the responsibility one has as a filmmaker, stating: “Whenever I film, I always have in mind what I call The Question of the After. What do we leave with the people we film?” He compared filming someone to “in a way we are stealing from them.” "You have to be elegant, to take care," he continued, and elaborated: "Even if you don't want to hurt, you can hurt. It's fragile.”