Following the death of her nine-month-old daughter Pauline in 1970, Trintignant wrote and directed "Ça n’arrive qu’aux autres", a semi-autobiographical film related to her personal tragedy. The 1971 film starred Catherine Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni as a couple coping with the death of their infant daughter. Trintignant blurred the boundaries between fiction and her life in several ways: she cast her brother Serge Marquand as Deneuve's character's brother, included her older daughter Marie in several scenes, and used actual images and footage of her daughter Pauline to depict the deceased child in the film.