Reda Kateb goes behind the scenes of her film with hospitalized children

For the first time since 2015, actor Reda Kateb went to the other side of the camera to direct On a threadwhich hits theaters on October 30. This tender and moving social comedy highlights hospital clowns, these characters who dedicate their day to the bursts of laughter of sick children.

“The clown is a figure that I have been pursuing for a very long time: for me it is very linked to childhood. I am from a generation where the clown was not at all evil: the circus was magical,” he said on the set of C to you this Friday, October 25.

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A film for which the actor carried out several immersions in different hospitals in the Paris region. “Before I started writing the script, I needed to know my subject, to discover this job of hospital clown and to spend time with these people in hospitals,” he said.

“A little girl in palliative care”

These immersions also succeeded in changing his vision of the hospital. “Rather than being heartbroken, when I see this, I say to myself that it’s incredible. Suddenly, I no longer see the hospital, I see children dying of laughter, this clown who is taking us elsewhere. It’s as if the decor changed,” he says, amazed.

But the beginnings were nevertheless particularly trying for Reda Kateb, who almost abandoned her project. “The first hospital room I arrived in was that of a little girl in palliative care, where I was supposed to be just for observation. After a few minutes, I sang A green mouseshe looked at me, I will never forget her look and I needed to get out. I told myself that I would never make a film about that, it’s too hard.”

It was ultimately the clowns themselves who changed his mind. “You don’t realize, she blinked, she communicated with us (…) Come on, let’s go to the next room.” A room in which he was greeted with immense bursts of laughter, which he decided to put at the heart of his film.