The Depths Of Delpy

My Zoe is new terrain for Julie Delpy. The writer, director and actor chats to Courtney Thompson about fierce mothers, defying expectations and the future of filmmaking

- Courtney Thompson

When Julie Delpy was nine, she wrote a story about motherhood. “I was obviously far from being a mother, but I’ve always been obsessed with parenting and children,” she says.

Forty-two years after penning that piece, Delpy has written, directed, and stars in My Zoe, a sci-fi thriller film that asks how far you would go to save your children, and then stretches the answer to the nth degree.

Delpy plays Isabelle, a geneticist who is going through a thorny divorce with custody of her daughter a central tension. Then she’s left unmoored when (spoiler alert!) tragedy strikes and her daughter dies. In the wake of the devastating loss, Isabelle pursues a radical solution: cloning her late daughter. “For me, it was important to explore the subject of motherhood, of separation, what it means to be a parent and the anxiety that comes with it,” Delpy says.