Écrire le Soi Cinématique with Sara Cemin

Welcome friends.

Speaking with

Sara Cemin

reminded me how much I romanticised the idea of being born into an artistic environment. Having observed at close hand, more than once, the environment of an artistic family - where politics and philosophy as well as aesthetics were the subjects of dinner table discussion - I lamented my own small “c” conservative, suburban upbringing.

Sara grew up as the only child of Brazilian sculptor Saint Clair Cemin and Serbian filmmaker Svetlana Cemin, living transatlantically between Paris, New York, and other glamorous artistic metropoles. Opening my conversation with Sara, I projected that this sounded to me like a bohemian-intellectual fever dream. But as Sara quickly pointed out, living inside an artistic household often meant instabilities, decenterings, and a collision of idiosyncrasies in which a child can struggle with loneliness and identity.

And yet, as she described sanding marble in the run-up to her father’s major Zurich show, there was a palpable sense of pride and endurance, a kind of spiritual pragmatism and perhaps newly found self-awareness. Her reflections on work - whether writing for her Substack Welcome to No Man’s Land, film producing in France, or now assisting her father with his latest international exhibition - are rooted in a knowing sensibility (especially for her age) that art is less about transcendent genius and more about a rhythm of effort, the patience to show up, an often lamented entrepreneurship, and a lifelong labour of self-making and remaking.

Sara’s honesty about living with her parents again at 25 felt strikingly unvarnished. She didn’t pretend it was ideal, nor did she pathologise it. Instead, she framed it as a strange but rewarding re-encounter. It was a reminder that there is a moment when one should become an adult on equal terms with one’s parents—but that requires a shift in dynamics from both sides of the parent-child relationship.

It’s one thing to flee the nest to claim independence; it’s another to return and find a different vantage point on the people who raised you. In our conversation, it was clear that part of her project as a writer is to sketch out that shift: from being seen as a daughter to seeing her parents as people.

Recent posts - The Honest Truth About Working with My Dad, Practicing Humility in the Vain Age, and Here Comes the Self-Reflexive Essay - dive into this headlong.

As we talked, it became obvious that the psychic residue of her upbringing isn’t just anecdotal, it’s philosophical. Her family’s belief in the unconscious, the spiritual dimensions of art, and the surreal as a mode of everyday being informed not only her parents’ work but her own approach to writing and creative community.

I found her referencing of the etymology of the word “idiot” in ancient Greece (a person who doesn’t follow their parent’s profession) both delightful and incisive. It was a sharp take on how familial legacies - whether accepted, rejected, or reluctantly inherited - carry cultural as well as psychological weight.

Finding Independence in a Creative World

As an interviewer, I felt slightly uneasy about framing the early part of the discussion so directly through Sara’s relationship with her parents. I wanted to get the balance right; that this was a conversation about her life and work, and not a pointed psychoanalytic excavation of “trauma”.

Sara has clearly tried to step out of the gravitational field of her parents’ identities. Studying at Edinburgh, moving between cities, experimenting with theatre, and later working in film production; all of these gestures read as moves toward creative individuation. But, as she herself reflected, there was always a knowledge lurking in the background: “There’s no real way to extricate myself from them.”

What struck me wasn’t the resignation in that statement, but its clarity. It takes maturity to realise that independence doesn’t have to mean detachment, and that leaning into one’s artistic lineage doesn’t negate personal authorship. In fact, the conversation seemed to hover around this very tension: how to be proximate to influence without being consumed by it.

Sara’s account of her own path, through writing, theatre, film studies, and back again to personal essays, was a vivid reminder that artistic trajectories are an endless process of becoming. We discussed the “I want to be a filmmaker” moment that many young creatives have. But Sara was refreshingly candid: “If I really wanted to make a film, I would have done it already.”

Her self-awareness didn’t strike as self-defeatist; it read as rigorous. What she’s most interested in, it seems, is not cinematic authorship in the traditional sense, but the inner worlds and external infrastructures that define and complicate creative expression.

We both agreed that Substack has become an odd little island in the choppy archipelago of digital media - less toxic than Twitter, more prone to the contradictions and anxieties around self-expression and self-promotion. It was interesting to hear Sara’s skepticism about the platform’s future. Her viral 2 a.m. Notes post about “Substack being for the English kids who read the books” gained her hundreds of subscribers, which, she admitted, was both validating and vaguely ridiculous.

It crystallised a tension that haunts many online creatives: the algorithms reward glibness, while longform, thoughtful work often floats in silence.

Still, there was something liberating in Sara’s stance. She doesn’t obsess about monetisation. She resists being trapped by a niche. She posts because she wants to-because sometimes that’s all the motivation you need. In an era of branding and “content strategies,” that kind of creative stubbornness can seem genuinely radical, but perhaps a little naive (as we discuss)?

I certainly ruminate about this conundrum: niching out, branding the self, and strategising one’s growth versus just going with the flow of interests and inspirations at a given moment. I guess it’s always the work of balance.

I’ve never been to a Substack meet-up. I don’t know why such events give me anxiety just hearing about them (maybe it’s the default introvert who hates networking in me). So Sara’s description of a Substack gathering in New York where the main question was “What’s your niche?” sounded simultaneously ironic and bleak.

“My niche is no niche,” she told them. A knowing deflection, I thought. But one I’m on board with. It encapsulates the kind of multi-hyphenate, restlessly curious person the internet both celebrates and punishes. The market wants clarity; the artist wants possibility. Sara’s refusal to reduce herself to one topic or tone - she acknowledged the professional price that can come with it.

Underneath everything we discussed - cinema-going habits, the French film industry, the nepo baby discourse - was a deeper meditation on identity. Not in the sense of social performance or personal branding, but in the existential question of “What am I doing this for?” Sara was anything but performatively jaded, but neither was there a naive romanticisation of the “self.” Even if her cosmopolitan, transatlantic upbringing, along with the fact she’s still very young (from my 51-year-old vantage point), could easily shape a persona of entitlement.

These conversations on Cinema Body / Cinema Mind are proving to be profoundly moving for me. It’s invigorating to hear the honesty of curious minds out in the world, so cognisant of the struggles and anxieties of the modern age, so resonant with the labour of making the self, while challenging the soulless grind of capitalistic individualism.

My small but definitive hope is that the guests - and any watchers, readers, or listeners- feel a resonance; that the interrelation between what they do and who they are carries with it an innate and vital essence. A human, moral value that goes beyond visibility, success, or recognition. Again, I feel myself creeping into worthiness here, but I’ve talked about with Sara in Part 2 of the conversation (for paid subscribers), maybe we need something of a “new sincerity” in cultural discourse.

Sara, like the other guests I’ve spoken to so far, is engaged in the ongoing labour - and quiet joy - of writing a cinematic life. Its diffuse pathways, relentless pivots, pauses, contradictions, and daily reckonings. Perhaps having “no niche” is its own form of integrity.

Part 1 for everyone:

00:00 - Introduction and Background

02:56 - Navigating Substack and Online Communities

06:02 - The Challenge of Niche Writing

08:54 - The Influence of Cinema on Personal Growth

12:12 - Growing Up in an Artistic Family

14:54 - The Complexity of Artistic Identity

17:51 - Reflections on Cinematic Style

21:01 - The Entrepreneurial Spirit of Artists

24:01 - Living with Artistic Parents

27:04 - Finding Independence and Personal Identity

36:20 - The Influence of Family in Art and Film knowledge

39:47 - Exploring the Unconscious in Artistic Expression

42:25 - Navigating Nepotism in the Arts

46:42 - The Journey of Education and Career Choices

50:52 - The Role of Critics in Art and Cinema

Part 2 for paying subscribers.

55:00 - Understanding the Film Industry Landscape

01:01:16 - Cultural Differences in Cinema: France vs. America

01:05:36 - The Hidden World of Film Festivals

01:09:46 - The Evolution of a Creative Platform: Substack

01:13:05 - Exploring Depth in Writing

01:15:19 - The Intersection of Myth and Masculinity

01:17:49 - Navigating Authenticity in Storytelling

01:20:33 - The Crisis of Authenticity in Art

01:23:09 - The Shift Towards Autobiographical Narratives

01:26:27 - The Simplification of Artistic Interpretation

01:28:07 - 10 Questions on Cinematic Identity

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PART 2 of my discussion with Sara Cemin is below: