It is the story of a child of Malian immigrants raised in a city who one day chooses to "express his anger" with a camera and finds himself on a red carpet in Hollywood. A fairy tale far from the reality of the suburbs that Ladj Ly, 39, tirelessly denounces.
Read also: Ladj Ly, the filmmaker from Montfermeil
Jury Prize at Cannes, launch of its school of cinema, selection at the Oscars, passing the milestone of two million admissions ... The year 2019 will have been that of Les Misérables . And that of Ladj Ly. With the Oscars on Sunday, and eleven Caesar nominations in late February, 2020 could be too.
An irresistible ascent that does not surprise this silent, viscerally attached to his stronghold of Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis), the setting for his feature film, but also for the novel by Victor Hugo. "Social misery is always the same there," he says.
It is there, in the city of Bosquets - where he arrived at the age of one year and still lives with his wife, their three children, not far from his mother and his brothers and sisters -, that Ladj Ly finds salvation by buying a camera. He has just abandoned the BEP electrotechnique where he failed, like most of his comrades. "We were doomed to be labor, to take over from our parents," said this son of a garbage collector and a stay-at-home mom.
“Among my friends here, none have the bac. Those of Paris all have it: how to explain that? ” , He said in 2018 to AFP.
For a year, in 2005, after the violence triggered by the death of two teenagers in an electrical transformer in the neighboring town of Clichy-sous-Bois, Ladj Ly scrutinized his neighborhood ( 365 days in Clichy-Montfermeil ). Before specializing in documentaries ( 365 days in Mali , Chroniques de Clichy-Montfermeil , Aloud ...), he also practiced "Copwatch", a practice which consists of filming arrests.
One day in 2008, he witnessed a blunder and transmitted his video to the press. The police will be sentenced. It is this story that inspired Les Misérables , where a child - played by the director's eldest son - films a burr, a spark that ignites a city permanently on the verge of explosion.
"Do not owe anyone anything"
His salvation, the director also found it by joining the collective "Kourtrajmé", founded by a handful of childhood friends (Kim Chapiron, Romain Gavras ...) who dreamed of making films after the breach opened by La Hatred by Mathieu Kassovitz, in 1995.
"It's Ladj who pulls us all," confirms his friend the artist JR, to whom he opened the doors of Les Bosquets. This is where the artist made his first wild collages.
“Ladj is extremely loyal. Giving fills him more than taking, and he's obsessed with owing nothing to anyone, ” says one of his close associates.
Read also: "Ladj Ly has served his sentence": the director of Les Misérables admits to having spent time in prison
In Ladj Ly's journey, there is also this three-year prison sentence for "abduction and forcible confinement". A case in which he has always claimed his innocence. After articles wrongly affirming that he had been condemned for “complicity in attempted murder” , published the day after the announcement of his pre-nomination to the Oscars, he filed a complaint against the magazines Valeurs actualites and Causeur .
During his trial in 2011, the filmmaker Costa Gavras (the father of his friend, Romain) came to testify in his favor, like the members of the Kourtrajmé collective. This solidarity and this spirit of gang, it is also what he wants to instill in the students of the school he created in Clichy-sous-Bois, free and accessible without condition of age or diploma, a dream that he had been feeding for fifteen years.
In mid-January, during his second return, Ladj Ly apologized for not having been "very available in recent months" . Moved by all his students together, he promised them that "the school would not let them go . "
"He has not forgotten where he comes from, he has not taken the big head. It is always there for the people of the district ” , testified one of his former classmates during a projection in the gymnasium of Montfermeil, the city having no cinema screen.
Oscar for best foreign film or not, when the whirlwind of Les Misérables has passed, he will get down to writing his next film. Second part of a triptych dedicated to ... Clichy-Montfermeil.