Jacques Audiard portrays middle class, multi-racial Paris in Cannes film

Record ID: 1627419

  • Title: Jacques Audiard portrays middle class, multi-racial Paris in Cannes film
  • Date: 15th July 2021
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (JULY 15, 2021) (REUTERS) ***WARNING: CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** (SOUNDBITE) (French) "PARIS 13TH DISTRICT" DIRECTOR JACQUES AUDIARD SAYING: "Why the 13th district? It's because I lived a long time in this neighbourhood, and I know it well. It's a mixed neighbourhood, we call it 'Chinatown'. And it's a neighbourhood that has changed a lot over the last 10, 15 years. It's been built up so much. And for me, seen from afar, this gives an image of a modern metropolis. I wanted to do a film set in Paris, but not really showing Paris around the Sacre Coeur basilica and the Eiffel Tower." ACTOR MAKITA SAMBA LOOKING ON (SOUNDBITE) (French) "PARIS 13TH DISTRICT" DIRECTOR JACQUES AUDIARD SAYING: "Often in films there's an oversimplification, like there's rich and poor, suburbs and what not. I wanted to talk about, how to say it, the middle class, people who have university degrees and have somewhat obtained a level of success, but don't really have anything going for them. Or they've suffered some failures, or they're going through them at the moment. And this interested me. They're not rebellious. They want to be free, but they don't rebel. So they're floating a bit. And I think this phase lasts just before they move on to something else - whether by love, by family. It's a temporary phase." CANNES, FRANCE (JULY 14, 2021) (REUTERS) FIREWORKS CELEBRATING FRANCE NATIONAL DAY JACQUES AUDIARD (IN HAT) AND CAST OF "PARIS 13TH DISTRICT" (L-R) JEHNNY BETH, LUCIE ZHANG, NOEMIE MERLANT AND MAKITA SAMBA WALKING ON RED CARPET PHOTOGRAPHERS MERLANT, BETH, ZHANG, AUDIARD AND SAMBA FIREWORKS
  • Embargoed: 29th July 2021 19:18
  • Keywords: Cannes film festival Jacques Audiard Les Olympiades Paris 13th District racial diversity
  • Location: CANNES, FRANCE/ FILMING LOCATIONS
  • City: CANNES, FRANCE/ FILMING LOCATIONS
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Arts/Culture/Entertainment,Europe,Film
  • Reuters ID: LVA002ELYD0ZR
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: CONTAINS NUDITY
    French director Jacques Audiard's new film "Paris 13th district" ("Les Olympiades") does not show the Eiffel Tower, Hausmannian buildings or the Seine River.
    He trains his lens instead on the brutalist apartment towers of the 13th district, known as the Chinatown of Paris, where he once lived.
    With characters inspired by the graphic novels of American artist Adrian Tomine, Audiard sketches young, educated but disillusioned people trying to find their path, and he consciously avoids film clichés of the rich-poor divide in France.
    "I wanted to talk about the middle class, people who have university degrees and have somewhat obtained a level of success, but don't really have anything going for them," Audiard told Reuters on Thursday (July 15), a day after his film premiered in Cannes.
    "Paris 13th district" is one of the 24 films in competition for the Palme d'Or at the 74th Cannes festival, which had been moved from May to July due to COVID concerns.
    Filming during the COVID lockdown helped first-time actress Lucie Zhang get into her character Emilie, a young woman struggling to hold a job and not to fall in love with her one-time flatmate.
    "During the pandemic, we're a lot more alone, and closed and isolated. So maybe that can bring this type of emotion in the characters, unconsciously," Zhang said.
    Audiard, who won the Palme d'Or in 2015 with "Dheepan", a film about Tamil refugees in France, said it was troubling that some French films lack multi-racial representation.
    In "Paris 13th district", two of the main characters - Camille and Emilie - are from immigrant families.
    "In Truffaut's films, you could see a real estate agent too, or a lover that passes out, but there is no Black person, no Chinese person. And it's true, we're very bothered by this," Audiard told journalists.
    Audiard has directed several critically-acclaimed films including "Sisters Brothers", "A Prophet" and "Rust and Bone".
    (Production: Michaela Cabrera, Thomas Newey, Christian Levaux)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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