Sight&Sound - 05.2020

(Jacob Rumans) #1

38 | Sight&Sound | May 2020


LADJ LY LES MISERABLES

The drone, we soon discover, is piloted by a
quiet teenager named Buzz (played by the direc-
tor’s own son Al-Hassan Ly), who uses it to observe life on
the streets in his neighbourhood. But when his remote-
controlled camera unwittingly captures the assault of a
young boy named Issa (Issa Perica) by a trio of gendarmes
led by hot-headed Chris (Alexis Manenti), the drone be-
comes crucial to the film’s narrative. The gendarmes
have been chasing Issa because he has stolen a lion cub
from a man named Zorro (Raymond Lopez), who runs a
local circus, an act which has fuelled tensions and suspi-
cions between different ethnic groups in the area. Once
they learn that Buzz has captured the incident on film,
the gendarmes frantically try to retrieve the footage so
they can wipe the record.
The drone shot that is so central to Les Misérables is also
a knowing homage to a famous sequence in the film to
which every other banlieue-set movie is inevitably com-
pared: Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995). In that land-
mark film, made years before drones became easily avail-
able filmmaking tools, in order to shoot a staggering shot
overlooking a square where kids listen to a DJ blast a now


classic Edith Piaf/KRS-One remix from his flat’s speakers,
Kassovitz had to use a rudimentary mini-helicopter. La
Haine caused a sensation on its release, opening the eyes
of many to the realities of life in the banlieues, with their
ever-present violence and police brutality. Twenty-five
years on, Ly’s film has also had an impact in France, ex-
posing a new set of problems, and showing how little has
changed in the interim.
When Les Misérables won the Jury Prize in Cannes in
May last year, to many it seemed as though Ly had come
out of nowhere, fully formed. But he had amassed an ex-
tensive body of work over the previous decade, directing
and starring in short films as part of the film collective
Kourtrajmé (named after ‘court métrage’, or ‘short film’, in
verlan, a strain of French slang which creates new words
by transposing the syllables of everyday ones). Among
these was a short film from 2017, also called Les Misérables
and starring some of the same actors, which was recog-
nised at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film
Festival and nominated at the César Awards. Indicative
of its position outside the mainstream of French cinema,
Kourtrajmé typically bypassed the usual channels of dis-
tribution, preferring to post its creations online.
Kourtrajmé in fact has a long history. Created in the
mid-1990s, it includes alongside Ly some more familiar
names, many with significant heritage in filmmaking.
One such is the son of film director Costa-Gavras, Romain
Gavras, who has made a name for himself directing
often brutal music videos for acts such as Justice, M.I.A.
and Kanye West, as well as the banlieue-set comedy The
World Is Yours (2018). That film starred Vincent Cassel
(son of the celebrated French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel),
who himself appeared in several of Kourtrajmé’s videos
and short films. Kim Chapiron, one of the founders of the
collective and the son of graphic designer Kiki Picasso,
has also made a name for himself, with Satan (2006), Dog
Pound (2010) and Smart Ass (2014). Today, Kourtrajmé has
135 members active in several fields.
Ladj Ly was born in Mali and, like Gavras and Cha-
piron, is passionate about creating a space for French
filmmaking outside its sometimes insular mainstream
channels. The group are also seeking to challenge expec-
tations: the short films made by Kourtrajmé are often
humorous and full of enthusiasm, qualities not usually
associated with the banlieues as they are presented in the
French media. In Go Fast Connexion (2009), for example,
one of Ly’s first short films, the director satirised the
ultra-serious tone of news reports from the banlieues,
which portray them as fortresses populated by minori-
ties that one enters at one’s own peril. Ten years later, Les
Misérables is another corrective to those Manichean and
inaccurate portrayals, demonstrating the way fear of the
Other is at the centre of a fundamentally broken system.
The film is the first in a planned trilogy, parts two and
three of which Ly is developing now.
Elena Lazic: Most people discovered you through Les Mi-
sérables, but you’ve been making films for a long time. Can
you tell me about your work with the collective Kourtrajmé?
Ladj Ly: Kourtrajmé is, before anything else, a group of
friends. We all grew up together. We’ve known each
other since kindergarten or primary school. The collec-
tive was formed in 1994 with the ambition to make our
own films. I joined in 1996. I was close friends with Kim
Chapiron as a kid. I started as an actor in his films, and

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Young people from a range
of diverse backgrounds
are at the heart of Les
Misérables (below), symbols
of the future of the banlieue
and of France itself
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