Vincent Dietschy was four years old when he caught his first gudgeon in the Alène river in Burgundy with his grandfather. Much later, in 1984, when the young Parisian had been admitted to the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC, "Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies"), the famous film school in Paris that was renamed Fémis in 1986, he continued to fish in the French capital from the tip of Ile Saint-Louis, at the foot of Robert Bresson's apartment. "Two of my rods fished for carp – baited with boiled peanuts – and the third fished for catfish – baited with a mega-mush, cherry or crayfish flavored," he said. Acclaimed by the critics (with his films Julie est amoureuse 1998, and Didine, 2008), Dietschy was, at the turn of the millennium, one of the rising stars of French cinema.

The silurus is the largest freshwater fish – two years ago, in the Gard region of France, a 2.62-meter specimen was caught – and a carnivorous predator. It's also known as a "catfish" and feeds on rivers and riverbanks. With Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), a universal cinephile inspiration regarding fish, and the fact that Dietschy's maternal grandparents lived near the docks where the river brigade is based, it's clear where the inspiration for Silure, which the director began to cook up in 2011, came from.

"A young policewoman, a diver with the Paris river brigade, finds herself confronted with an unprecedented natural phenomenon, embodied by a gigantic catfish, terribly aggressive, and a killer of human beings," read the submission to the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC, National Center for Cinema and the Moving Images) for a screenwriting grant on February 3, 2014. "As the monster wreaks havoc in the capital, threatening the mayor's policies just days before the choice of the city to host the Olympic Games, the heroine is on the front line as she confronts this force of evil. Aided in her fight by a young ichthyologist from the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), she also becomes more involved with her superior, the Commander."

Is that enough to attract producers? The project found no takers. "It's complicated to be with me," said Dietschy, with a frowning smile. "I have a reputation for making things cheaply. Producers know that with me, there'll be less money involved, that I won't agree on casting and so on. For them, I can appear to be a slow-down, a pain in the ass. But that's why I haven't given up on film: my voice is different, and I don't want to bow to the industry," he said. He is currently working on a series about the industry, Auteur, for which he has already written the first season. He spent years refining the film's script, looking in vain for financing.

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