“He is always present in one form or another.”

The hidden daughter of President François Mitterrand and Anne Pinjot, Mazarine Pinjot lived for a long time from the age of 9 to 16 in a Parisian apartment at 11 Quai Branly in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. An apartment where he never really felt at home, but where he was able to enjoy his father more intimately at the same time.

After running away at the age of 16, the 51-year-old writer has returned to what he considers the environment to write his latest work. “At the same time, I had a normal life, but you could never tell. I couldn’t sleep in this apartment because I felt the stress and anxiety of the time I was locked there,” he confided on the set. C to you. As if caught from his secret life, which lasted almost 10 years.

However, he has good memories with his father from this period. “I loved having him read my essays when I was in high school and college to get his feedback. He was a very good audience, he always said it was good, and he wasn’t even harsh in his critical opinion (…), but his opinion was important to me because I already had the idea of ​​making it my work. »

“I spent more time without my father than with him”

After watching a segment of the former president’s last wishes on December 31, 1994, his illegitimate daughter recounted the time spent without her. “It’s a very nice archive, because a year later he was in very bad shape,” he first noted, not without emotion.

“I have lived more time without my father than with… And yet, I still see him because, by definition, he is always on the screens, on the air, I hear his voice. Of course, I see the president more than my father, but there is always something that makes him appear in one way or another,” he concluded.