Watch: Coralie Fargeat’s Homemade ‘Star Wars’ Movie Made on VHS

Watch: Coralie Fargeat’s Homemade ‘Star Wars’ Movie Made on VHS

by Alex Billington
February 18, 2025
Source: YouTube

“General Solo, is your strike team assembled?” Time for a super fun blast from the past! Take a trip back into Coralie Fargeat’s childhood. In honor of the Academy Award nominations for French director Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film The Substance, Letterboxd has posted her very first film online. Fargeat dug up an old VHS tape from the 1990s that features her own homemade Star Wars movie – they scanned it and digitized it and now we can all enjoy it. Fargeat is nominated for Best Director at the Oscars this year, and The Substance has a total of five nominations. It’s her second feature film after making Revenge (2017) previously. This homemade Star Wars (titled La Guerre des étoiles in French) is kind of a remix of all of the three original movies, and features miniatures / action figures, some footage borrowed from the movies, and some of her own footage shot with her friends in the woods. This clunky no-budget VHS filmmaking is so much fun to see! Those Stormtroopers are hilarious. Click on [cc] for English subtitles in the video below.

Thanks to Letterboxd for posting this. They explain: “A very special memory from Academy Award nominee Coralie Fargeat writer, director, and producer of The Substance.” Her intro: “30 years ago, when I was 17 years old, I made a little Star Wars film. Using my family’s camcorder, I animated my toys frame by frame in stop motion, disguised my friends as Ewoks and stormtroopers, and edited on a VHS video recorder (which was the top device at the time!). It was such an amateur endeavor, but everything I loved about making films was already there… It was the place where I felt free, passionate and alive, and able to fully express myself. It’s after I made this little film that I knew that I wanted to be a director… Today as I am nominated for Best Director, I can’t help but remember this little film… Follow your dreams!” Awesome. Fargeat was born & raised in Paris. She studied at Sciences Po before beginning work on film sets. In 2010, Fargeat attended La Fémis, a prestigious cinema school in Paris. She was selected to be in its Atelier Scénario, a screenwriting workshop, where she was told her script would never be made because it was too violent. The rest is history.

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