'Babies' Director Says He Spent More Time With His Infant Cast Than His Own Kids

Awwwww. That's what was heard over and over again during a recent screening of Thomas Balmès' new documentary "Babies." And to elicit that response from an audience of jaded New York journalists, that says something.

The film follows four babies from different corners of the globe: Ponijao from Namibia, Bayarjargal from Mongolia, Mari from Japan and Hattie from San Francisco, Calif. With minimal dialogue and no narration, we just watch as the babies go from birth to first steps, a 79-minute adventure that makes your ovaries ache.

Balmès, a Parisian father of three himself, talked with ParentDish about giving birth to this intense project.

ParentDish: How did you even begin to cast this documentary?
Thomas Balmès: I wanted to find four loving families, four different environments, differences of wealth, different kinds of relationships, different from the Western way of living, like in Namibia and Mongolia. Japan was like a sci-fi atmosphere, like Blade Runner in Japan. I wanted a peer thing to be understood. This was not done to document from an anthropological point of view. The idea was to make a universal film on what it means to be a human being born today.

PD: As a father of young children, did you relate to anything during the filmmaking?
TB: I am French but like the Japanese father, I spend a lot of time surrounded by smart phones and computers and rarely spend a lot of time with my children by myself. People will recognize themselves in what they see. There's not one way of doing things. But I also felt a connection with the Mongolian and Namibian babies because their fathers were dealing with cattle far away from home.

PD: Why those four countries?
TB: At one stage, I thought of going to South America to follow a fifth baby, but these four were different enough. A fifth baby wouldn't have given me enough time for the other four.

PD: Will there be a sequel?
TB: There might be if the film works well. We will see next week if the public is interested.

PD: It sort of brought me back to the phenomenon of Michael Apted's Seven Up!
TB: That was more interviews with the kids, conversations with them. My kind of filmmaking is more observational and requires much more time in terms of shooting, which is why I have to think if I want to be doing it all my life. Maybe other people shooting it would be an option.

PD: What was your production schedule? It's hard enough for parents to follow their own baby for a year.
TB: We shot for 400 days over the period of two years. I spent more time with these four kids than my own kids during the shooting.

PD: Did the experience make you rethink your own parenting?
TB: I ended up with more questions than I had before, which is the role of a documentary -- not to tell you how to think but to bring more questions. I'm not in a position to give advice.

PD: The parents were so much like wallpaper in this film.
TB: The idea was to try to concentrate on the babies. With the framing, I tried to be on the babies, keep the film dialogue and narration free. To see the world from their perspective and get on film the first time they would encounter something new.

PD: The audience will also see something new.
TB: Like the Namibian baby never wearing diapers. The mom cleans him with a corn cob. The Mongolian mother cleans the baby with water from her mouth.

PD: Yes, there were a lot of shocking moments for the American audience. Did you ever try to stop a child from doing something? There were a lot of gasps in the audience when one baby fell.
TB: When the American baby is falling you didn't anticipate that. As for safety, even if the parents were not in the frame, they were a few meters away. I made it very clear that I would not be there to babysit the kids. And no baby was hurt during the filming. Everything was fine.

PD: I gasped when the baby ate dirt and touched tongues with the dog.
TB: This is totally cultural. When I showed the film in different countries, people were horrified that the Japanese baby can spend all day in a 15-square meter room with 20 other babies all day long. There is not one way of functioning in regards to health, safety, food and everything that we go through with parenting.

Related: Go to MovieFone to get showtimes for Babies at your local theater.