Ladj Ly and his film Les Misérables in the race for the Oscars

Before leaving for Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco and Australia, Ladj Ly was in New York to promote his film Wretched, in the race to participate in the Oscars, which will take place in Los Angeles on February 9, 2020.

" It's enormous, says the 39-year-old director, the film must go to the Oscars, in the interest of all, and something happens. It's a movie that's important, that has to be seen ". This is done for the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, who said he was upset by the film shot in the city of Bosquets de Montfermeil, provoking the controversial passage and accusations of recovery.

In New York, Ladj Ly held screenings, official luncheons, lectures and interviews and hosted a NYU film class with director and professor Spike Lee. A busy program. " You have to shake hands, you have to network, that's how it works. It's like a political campaign, you have to win votes ".

In Wretched, the jury's prize at the Cannes Film Festival last May, the filmmaker depicts the stormy relations of daily life between the police officers of the BAC (anti-crime squad) and the inhabitants of the Bosquets neighborhood in Montfermeil. This is what he has done for twenty-two years behind his camera, his weapon to denounce police burrs in the city in which he grew up and in which he still lives today.

Accustomed to documentaries and short films, Ladj Ly changes format and temporality with Wretched. After 365 days in Clichy-Montfermeil on the riots of 2005, the director makes us live twenty-four hours in the life of the city: inspired by real events, the flight of a cub in a circus and a police burr filmed by a drone will ignite the powders . The camera follows a trio of policemen in their daily lives of men and cops, including Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), the latest to join the team. Ladj Ly did not want to take sides and make a film against the police, and wanted to avoid clichés, rap and drug sellers.

The "microbes", nickname given by the police of the film to the young people of the district, concern the director: " They are more and more violent, we have created monsters, we have left young people delivered to themselves ". It is also for this young generation that he has worn his film, " this generation who wants to make films, these young people who think that it is an inaccessible medium, I show them that it is possible. Nobody believed it, the financiers did not want to follow us, and we're here today ". In 2018, he created the Kourtrajmé school in Montfermeil, which offers free training in the film industry.

Montfermeillois is proud to represent France in the United States. " This is a strong signal, I am still the first French black to have been selected in competition at Cannes, to be in the race for the Oscars in the US. I complained about the lack of diversity, being here shows that it's possible, it will give hope to many people ".

The subject of the film, the police violence, is inevitably echoed across the Atlantic. " This is a subject that is important in the United States. Faced with the silence and indifference of the French state on the fate of the suburbs, Ladj Ly hopes that the reception of the film abroad will change things. " An outside look, foreign to the film, it feels good. In France, there is total disregard for the suburbs. Nobody cares. French politicians have a veil in front of their eyes. They will eventually realize".

The young French director confides to be well received in the United States and New York, a city in which he likes to spend time. The story between New York and Montfermeil does not date from yesterday. In 2014, 42 dancers of the New York City Ballet had made the trip to dance the ballet Les Bosquets in front of the defunct bars of Ile-de-France. The ballet, created by the company and the artist JR, with whom the director grew up in Montfermeil, is inspired by the 2005 riots and the story of Ladj Ly. He gave birth to a short film of the same name. " French suburbs fascinate abroad, says Ladj Ly. We have a certain image of France, images of the Champs, the Eiffel Tower, but people do not realize that in France there are ghettos. When they see the film, they are shocked. "