Born in 1980 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and raised in France, the writer and director Katell Quillévéré made her feature film-making debut in 2010 with an intimate coming-of-age picture, Love Like Poison. She followed this with Suzanne (2013), a sweeping social-realist study of a woman’s life and choices. Her latest film, Heal the Living, which traces the journey of a heart from donor to transplant recipient, is an adaptation of the International Booker prize-nominated Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal.

Who or what first got you passionate about cinema?
I didn’t come from a cinephile background. My family would go to the movies about three or four times a year. I discovered cinema when I was 16 or 17, when I watched a TV programme about all the movies of Maurice Pialat. It was kind of a shock for me – I felt a kinship with him and I had this crazy idea that I could make movies myself.

Heal the Living feels like a big challenge compared with the smaller scale of your first two films. There is no central character to guide us through the story, lots of peripheral characters to be developed…
Yes, I was very scared to fail. With each film I try to renew myself and do things I haven’t done before, and you are perfectly right, the big challenge was to find a balance between this major story, between donation and transplant, and the way I want the film to truant itself – to meander a little. It was really hard to write, to direct and to edit, and to the very last moment of the edit I didn’t know if it was working.

This is the first thing you’ve done that is an adaptation of existing source material – what made you want to option this book?
First it was my instinct. I had such deep and strong emotions reading the book. Many French film-makers wanted to adapt the novel because it was very beautiful, so we all had to audition in front of De Kerangal and the publisher. At one point I didn’t really understand myself – why do you want to adapt this book so much? But then in the writing I realised that it was the same, in some ways, as the films I have done before. It was about resilience, how you rebuild yourself after a loss, the way life goes on and love can circulate.

You changed the structure of the book, developing the character of the transplant recipient. How did Maylis de Kerangal feel about it?
It was tough sometimes. I had to convince her of my choice, because she asked herself the same question and didn’t find the same answer. The idea to develop the character of the receiver – for me, I see it as kind of a circle. But what was beautiful for me was that she was one of the first people to see the movie and she really, really liked it. She told me, OK, I understand everything now.

You don’t flinch from the brutality of surgery – was that an actual heart transplant that you filmed?
In fact it’s all special stage effects. We worked for months with guys who specialise in horror movies, in partnership with surgeons. The heart is latex; inside is a little motor. When I first started to confront these images I was really frightened. I had to ask myself, does the movie really need that? What is interesting in the movie is to explore all the different aspects of a heart. The heart as an organ, a pump – something really functional – and also something extremely magical and sacred, which represents the soul. For me, the contradiction is a metaphor for life – both trivial and sacred. So I had to show it.

One of the scenes that really stands out is the surfing sequence early on. Both the editing and the photography are superb. But it looked like it might have been a challenge…
It was awful! The editing took, like, four months for one minute. It was very difficult to edit different shots of surf – you can’t control the sea so you can’t control the edit. During the shoot I was on the beach. I couldn’t do anything, I would have killed myself, it was too dangerous. The actors were real surfers, they were out on the waves. The photographer was an ex-surfer; he makes a living shooting in extreme conditions.

There has been a lot written recently about the gender imbalance among directors in Hollywood, how it’s so much more difficult for women. Looking at France we have a different story. There are a lot of high-profile female directors. What is your perspective?
For me, in a lucky way, it has never been an issue being a woman. My generation, we benefited from the fights and struggles of the previous generation. Not just female directors but through the feminist movement in France. The fact is, we are a lucky country in terms of female film-makers, but also in terms of cinema in general. We have a unique system in place to defend our own national cinema. Many movies also means more women making movies.

You don’t use social networking – no Twitter, no Facebook – why is that?
I think I’m shy. I have a problem with the representation of oneself. I don’t see the point of it. Choosing the right photo to put on Facebook? I don’t have enough time to do that. The time spent putting it out there that you have an amazing life is just too tiring.

Heal the Living will be released in UK cinemas on 28 April