Ladj Ly, the Miserables of the banlieu will become a trilogy / CLIP

A breathtaking thriller set in a Paris suburb with a group of kids defying the violent police has rewritten, in a key very close to the documentary, the cinema on the theme of the suburbs, has garnered prizes - from the prestigious award to directing to the festival Cannes 2019 to the French nomination for the foreign Oscar, to the low man at Cesar with 4 awards including best film - and now it finally arrives to the Italian public: it is I Miserabili (Les Miserables), Ladj Ly's first work. From May 18 MioCinema.It inaugurates the first digital platform dedicated to auteur cinema that focuses on the cinema hall and its audience which has already reached 130 cinemas, even 300 screens, even before leaving, as announced today by Andrea Occhipinti of Lucky Red from which the idea shared with Circuito Cinema and MYmovies was born (also available on Sky Primafila Prem; yesterday).
Ladj Ly is a newcomer to a fictional film, but he is well known in the French cinema environment for his commitment and his activism: the free cinema school, accessible to all, in Montfermeil where he was born and still resides is a model, a cultural outpost that also in this period is working with a short film. Ladj Ly, respected and charismatic ("maybe because I didn't go away and this makes the difference"), a figure comparable to a French Spike Lee, launches the film in Italy with a remote meeting with the press. Behind him, the background of the videocall is a painting with the writing Kourtrajmé on it; which is the artistic collective to which it belongs and with which it has always worked.
The Miserables "does not end here". The new cantor of the suburbs, who took Victor Hugo's masterpiece (in Montfermeil the Hugonian character of Jean Valjean meets Cosetta for the first time, among other things); and made it an engaging film among the best of the season, it will go on with a trilogy. "During this time I have received dozens of proposals from America to make films, series, even a Marvel film, but I have refused everything, maybe in the future I will consider them, but for now I have other priorities: to go on telling my people" , the 1978-born director, born to Malian-born parents, told ANSA. If The Miserables is set in the present day, the next two will go back, one to the 90s and another, more political, will tell the historical revolts of the suburbs in 2005 focusing in particular on Claude Dilain mayor of Saint Denis.
The history of the Miserables (with the excellent Damien Bonnard) is inspired by true or in any case plausible events and is sufficiently far from the stereotypes of these environments: they are all more or less poor Christs, with starvation wages in environments where social unease unites everyone. In the film, as in the meeting today, Ladj Ly underlines the "police violence" that is the only promise kept by governments since the bloody riots of 2005, "while culture, education and social policies are what it would take." Now with the pandemic "it is a catastrophe - says the director who helps himself with the NGO Banlieus Santé - they are powder keg areas ready to explode, they were poor and now they are very poor, a situation that certainly risks degenerating and in which we witness a increasing police violence, there are countless videos of the inhabitants documenting these abuses of the security forces ". Through the film, which ends with Hugo's phrase "There are neither bad herbs nor bad men. There are only bad farmers"; Ladj Ly is critical of politicians, the government and institutions, "Macron included" who "are also handling the emergency very badly, not being able to even let us have protective masks". According to the director, public opinion has partly changed on the outskirts because, also thanks to the demonstrations of the yellow vests and the massive adhesion to the strikes of this autumn, "she realized the difficulties of those who live in these areas and the enormous violence The Miserables had the merit of showing from the inside how one lives in areas that three quarters of the French know only from the media ". In spite of everything Ladj Ly wants to cultivate hope, like so many in this period, that he will not turn back: "Not all evils come to harm, this lockdown has shown a great solidarity among people and is, I hope, the end of a it was an opportunity to change society. Of course I'm not sure, humanity is so crazy that the risk - he added to ANSA - soon forgets all this and resumes its usual mistakes, even if the virus has shown that capitalism and wealth are not enough to avoid being victims of it ".
Today the Cannes 2020 festival should have started, things went differently, but this "is a tragedy for independent, auteur cinema that needs world showcases like that to make itself known. We hope to overcome the moment, many production houses are at the gas barrel, sets canceled ". Finally Polanski and the night of the Cesar dominated by the controversy: "I have won many prizes, if Polanski has done crap he must be judged, the rest does not interest me".