Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
Ladj Ly's Les Misérables (2019) is a story about the eventual outbreak of police violence and racial tensions on the fringes of French society, taking place on the outskirts of Paris and bearing similarities to the film La haine (1995) 25 years ago. Elena Lazic, the author of this article, talked to the director about how he struggled to create more space for filmmaking outside of mainstream French cinema.
At the beginning of director Ladj Ly's film debut Les Misérables (2019), a drone is flying, soaring over the Montfermel region on the northern outskirts of Paris, while viewers look down from its favorable vantage point. Although Montfermel is just over 16 kilometers from the center of Paris, life here is another world, and this lens gives us a bird's eye view of the area that belongs to Paris, which for most people only appears in the news.
Montmel, also home to the inn run by the villains Thénardiers in Victor Hugo's epic 1862 novel Les Misérables, is also the source of the film's title. Looking at the area from the perspective of a drone, it seems peaceful and trouble seems to have been safely removed, but Raj Lee's film takes us down to the ground to pay attention to what's happening on the streets and to feel the dangerous tensions that exist within the people and between them and the police.
Set in two worrying days, the film offers an insider's perspective on the tensions that Raj Leigh himself witnessed growing up in Montfermel, most notably in 2005, when a police violence caused a riot that ultimately led to the deaths of two teenagers – an event that partly inspired the director to create Les Misérables.
We soon discover that the drone is piloted by a quiet teenager named Buzz (director's biological son, Al-Hassan Lee Al-Hassan Ly), who uses drones to observe life on the streets of his neighborhood. However, when his remote camera inadvertently captures some of the scenes, it becomes a key element of the film's narrative, in which a young boy, Issa (Issa Perica), is attacked by three police officers led by the hot-headed Chris (Alexis Manenti). Police have been pursuing Issa for stealing a lion cub from a man named Zorro (Raymond Lopez), the owner of a local circus, whose actions exacerbate tension and suspicion between different local ethnic groups. When the police learned that Buzz had recorded everything with a drone, they frantically tried to retrieve the footage to delete the footage.
Drone footage is at the heart of Les Misérables, and is clearly a tribute to a famous scene from Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine (1995), which will inevitably be contrasted to any film set on the outskirts of Paris. In that landmark film, in an era when drones had not yet become an easily accessible tool for filmmaking, in order to shoot a stunning shot overlooking the square, director Kasowitz had to use a humble mini helicopter in which children listened to music coming from the stereo of their apartments, or the classic chandel singer Edith Kelly. Edith Piaf or rapper KRS-One. As soon as "Angry Youth" was launched, it caused a sensation and gave many people a glimpse into the state of life on the outskirts of Paris, where there was ubiquitous violence and police brutality. Today, 25 years later, Raj Leigh's films have also had an impact in France, revealing a new set of problems that reflect that things haven't changed much in the past 25 years.
When Les Misérables won the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival last May, to many people, Raj Lee seemed to appear out of thin air, a person who had never heard of it, and the work was so mature. But in fact, he has accumulated a lot of experience in the past decade, directing and participating in a series of short films in an art group called Kourtrajmé (French for "short films"). One of the 2017 short films, also called Les Misérables, starred the same actor, was recognized at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and was nominated for a César Award. Short films produced by members of the Kourtrajmé group bypass the usual distribution channels and are often released directly through online channels, which indicates that Kourtrajmé is positioned outside the mainstream French film industry.
In fact, the Kourtrajmé group has a long history, having been founded in the mid-90s and has created some more familiar names along with Raj Lee, many of which have left behind film masterpieces. One of them is Romain Gavras, the son of film director Costa-Gavras, who is known for directing violent music videos by several entertainers and who has also made le monde est à toi (2018), a comedy set on the outskirts of Paris. The film stars Vincent Cassel (son of the famous French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel), who has appeared in some of kourtrajmé's short films. Kim Chapiron, one of the group's founders and the son of graphic designer Kiki Picasso, is best known for his satan (2006), Dog Pound (2010) and Smart Ass (2014). Today, the Kourtrajmé group has 135 members and is active in several fields.
Born in Mali, West Africa, Raj Lee, like Gafras and Chapulone, is passionate about creating space for French filmmaking outside of the usually isolated mainstream channels in France. The group also tried to challenge expectations: Kourtrajmé's short films were often humorous and passionate, and when screened in the French media, it was difficult for audiences to associate such a high-quality film with the outskirts of Paris. For example, in Raj Ri's first short film, Go Fast Connexion (2009), the director satirizes the extremely serious tone of news coverage of the outskirts of Paris, which portrays the outskirts of Paris as a bastion inhabited by minorities, with outsiders feeling guilty if they want to. Ten years later, Les Misérables is yet another correction of the distorted depiction of seemingly mysterious minorities in news reports, showing that fear of the Other is at the heart of a fundamentally destroyed system. The film is the first of a planned trilogy, and currently, Raj Lee is working on a second and third.
Elena Lazic (EL): Most people find you through Les Misérables, but you've been making movies for a long time. Can you tell us about the work you created in the kourtrajmé group?
Ladj Ly (LL): Among other things, the Kourtrajmé group was first and foremost a group of my friends, we all grew up together, we've known each other since kindergarten or elementary school. The group was founded in 1994 with the ambition to make our own films. I joined in 1996 and Kim Chaplong and I have been good friends since childhood. I started out as an actor in his films, and then at the age of 17, I bought my first camera and started shooting the neighborhood where I lived.
EL: Some other members of the Kourtrajmé group have turned to shooting music or left the outskirts of Paris, but in your short film you still focus on the outskirts of Paris in a documentary style. Why do you want to stay?
LL: Because that's my hometown. Unlike my friends who lived in Paris, I grew up on the outskirts of Paris, montfermel. It's very intimate to me and there are so many stories that can be told, so in a way, I make telling stories there my specialty, or at least the stories I know. And there's also a sense of urgency, there's a lot of problems to deal with, and I think I can at least make another decade or more about the outskirts of Paris.
EL: Was it a deliberate choice or a last resort for your short film shot by the Kourtrajmé group to be posted online?
LL: A kind of film always has to be somewhere, because we're not on the producer's watch list, and we're not funded by any agency, and it's time to have to do it ourselves. The Kourtrajmé group was born because we didn't feel like we belonged to the mainstream French film scene, so we decided to make our own films, with our own stories, our own actors.
It just so happens that when we started making movies, it was the beginning of the digital age. Digital cameras were just emerging, and for the first time people could access the Internet at home. We realized that the internet was a nice space to play our movies. At that time, Dailymotion and YouTube didn't exist, and we had a Kourtrajmé website where we would post videos, which was very successful. I've always insisted on independent production, and even my documentaries are always censored by TV channels, and they don't want the way I make them, so I put them online for free. I've never made money making a movie, I've always done it.
EL: Why did you decide to join the role of the police and tell the story from a police point of view?
LL: I want to surprise the audience. I've made so many films that no one thought I would tell the story from a police point of view, and the audience would be amazed at how I made a film that was impartial, unjudicial, and presented only one scene as fairly as possible. That's also the strength of the film: it describes reality. The original intention of this film was that we wanted to express that everyone can be miserable – the people, the police... Everyone in the universe can be miserable.
EL: How do you strike a balance between bashing reality and opening up a conversation?
LL: It's a political film, and I have something to say: I'm not making movies for the sake of making movies, it's because I want to change the boundaries. The idea behind the film's open-ended ending is that it might make people think and spark a debate, and that's what's happening right now. Like it or not, this movie is a tool that gets people to talk, changes some things, and a lot of things are being rethought. The film was viewed by more than 2 million viewers in France. After watching the film, the government said, they wanted to improve the living conditions of residents on the outskirts of Paris. Although it is still only a verbal failure to implement the action, this is how things have a chance to change.
EL: It's interesting that the film gives us a perspective from a police officer from another province — a complete outsider.
LL: A lot of times, the cops who come to these communities are fresh out of school or have little experience, and most of them are from other provinces. I think it would be interesting to tell this story from the perspective of this person, who will go along with the audience to understand the society in front of us. Unfortunately, people on the outside can only get to know the outskirts of Paris through media and politics, and most people have never been there. It's important to let people know what's really going on on the outskirts of paris so that when they hear about the outskirts of Paris, they don't immediately fall into stereotypes or their own imaginations.
EL: You filmed the real-life protests in 2005, which is also the content of your short documentary, 365 jours à Clichy-Montfermeil (2007). What do you think is the difference between fictional films and documentaries?
LL: I didn't separate the two. If I make a movie, it's because I have something to say. A few years ago, I found myself filming a moment of police brutality – I witnessed all the consequences. I think it would be interesting to make it into a fictional drama. Although Les Misérables is fictional, its impact is still strong. Whether it's a documentary or a fictional film, the message it conveys is real, and that's what matters most.
EL: You also made a documentary, 365 days in Mali (2014), and you said you wanted to make a movie in Africa. Do you still want to do that now?
LL: Yeah, it's a wish I've had for a long time. We will set up a Kourtrajmé Film School in Senegal in September. We want to build a presence in Dakar, train this generation of filmmakers and develop projects there.
EL: You also opened a Kourtrajmé film school in Montfermel.
LL: Yes. If we want French cinema to change and become more diverse, we have to change it ourselves. If we don't, then no one will do it. So, together with this school, I decided to give the opportunity to diversify – cultural diversity, diversity of social backgrounds... We give everyone a chance. The school is free and open to all, applicants do not need to have a diploma. This year is the second year of the school and everything is going well. It's amazing to see all these energetic, thoughtful, and incredibly creative young people. In the next few years, there will definitely be a lot of things happening, that's for sure, not just me and my career, I developed with the Koortrajmé group, we always do anything together, and that's what I'm working towards today. I want all students to benefit from the network of resources I have and the resources I have created. All of our students have a lot to do and none of them will be left behind.
| Translation: Xiaoshuang @Fan Shadow Translation
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French freelance film critic, writer and model living in London, England
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