For his first film role, singer Bilal Hassani plays a 50-year-old fan of a pop diva who has become a YouTuber-destroyer, in “Les Reines du drama”, a crazy, queer and punk film.
This feature film, presented during the Cannes Film Festival in the spring, allows the artist “to open this door as an actor”, he told AFP on the Croisette. But above all he takes a “great honor from being part of this story” written and directed by Alexis Langlois, a non-binary filmmaker.
“When I started writing, six years ago, I discovered Bilal on YouTube, where he talked about his coming out and how it went badly in college, and I said to myself that YouTubers are a few storytellers of our time”, added Alexis Langlois.
By chance, Bilal Hassani is a fan of his short film “Terror, my sisters!”. The two make contact via social networks. It is the producer of Alexis Langlois who is campaigning for Bilal Hassani to play the major role in the film.
France's representative at Eurovision 2019 experienced the filming as “child's play”. This 1h55 feature film flies like a meteor, with references that range from cartoons to fantasy cinema of the 1970s. Without forgetting a soundtrack which notably features a provocative electro grenade pulled out by Rebeka Warrior.
It is particularly tasty to see Bilal Hassani play a hysterical YouTuber, driven by bad intentions, knowing that he himself was the victim of online hatred.
The singer sees “no parallel or mirror” with his life but took the opportunity to “let off some steam by being obnoxious”. “This character who is a fan of a singer suffers from loneliness and, because of that, becomes a bit of a monster. We can't completely blame him,” according to the singer-songwriter.
He too was a “fan who took refuge in the love for his idols”, confiding in particular that he did not leave his room for four days when Michael Jackson died in 2009.
