Riad Sattouf mischievously proclaims: “As my name does not indicate, I am Breton!” It is therefore in Rennes that we meet the multi-awarded author for the story of his eventful life as the child of a Syrian father and a French mother, tossed between Libya, Syria and France. With his prankster appearance, his laughing eyes and his soft voice, he speaks with humility but without false modesty. At 46, he kept a cool head, despite the success of his first film, The Beautiful Kidsin 2009, then the triumph of the six volumes of The Arab of the futurepublished between 2014 and 2022, translated into 23 languages and sold more than 3.5 million copies. The nine volumes of Esther’s notebooks (2016-2024) have confirmed his talent as a painter of youth, which he studies without complacency but with communicative empathy. Concerned about the right word, he takes the time to answer our questions, crowding out the most indiscreet ones with humor and admitting to often being “out of step”.
Notre Temps: First of all, welcome “on board” of Notre Temps, where we are very happy to welcome you, especially since you will, over the months, tell us about the life of your mother who, like many our readers, was born in the 1950s…
Riad Sattouf: Thank you, that means a lot to me! When I was a child, the only newspaper that was on my Breton grandparents’ bedside table was Our Time. I really didn’t understand why they were reading that: it had no interest since there were no comics (laughs)! But it fascinated me… They would have loved to read me in their magazine, so when Marie Auffret, the editorial director of Our Time offered me a collaboration, I said yes straight away! Especially since I was preparing this project based on my mother’s stories… A sign! I can only do things if they make sense in my little world. I was sometimes asked to take on famous comic book heroes or to make “franchise” films, but I always refused. I need to feel a personal connection in everything I do. Whether this is linked to the past… Publish in Our Timeit’s a bit like writing for my family, for my now deceased grandmother. She would have been very proud.
Why is your Breton grandmother so dear to you?
Riad Sattouf: She gave me my first Tintin! She encouraged me to draw, she thought I was slightly superior to Leonardo da Vinci, a real genius therefore, but she didn’t like comics! For her, it was a stupid thing. My first published books were very corrosive, in the spirit of Cabu, Wolinski or Robert Crumb (3)… For The Arab of the futureI wanted to make a comic book that my grandmother would have liked, therefore easy to access, with lots of texts and characters who tell a family story, without too trashy humor, but still a little… I do comics for people who don’t read them, that’s my obsession! And by considering my grandmother as my first reader, my muse, that’s where success came!
You don’t want to be gratuitously shocking, but you don’t sugarcoat what are often harsh realities…
Riad Sattouf: And I don’t idealize my loved ones! I hate autobiographies in the form of panegyrics. I like to show the characters with their rough edges, with their very dark sides. In Star Warsit’s Darth Vader who interests me the most: he was good, how did he become bad? What leads him to finally save his son? Life is like that, no one is magnificent or horrible. I like the nuance, the doubt, the unease of chiaroscuro.
Your mother, Clémentine, is already present in “The Arab of the Future”, what are you going to explore over the episodes of four monthly pages?
Riad Sattouf: She’s not that present, I think! She is erased behind the father, who takes up all the space. He was a far-right Syrian, from a very poor, very racist background, who dreamed of becoming a dictator and who made us live in his village in Syria. It was overwhelming! To write The Arab of the futureI based this on my memories only. Then one time, I still asked my mother for clarification. And there, she told me dozens of things that I didn’t know, and which I found brilliant. What if I made comics from this soil? Tell your point of view! Her life in the 1950s-1960s, with her parents, her education, which led her to go to a man like my father… And then to paint a portrait of France and its evolution since the Second World War… This war that my grandparents told me so much about. I’m carrying out a sort of investigation, I’m digging into family archeology, a trip to France during the Trente Glorieuses. It’s fascinating, I learn a lot and it changes the way I see the world.
What did you discover that was so important?
Riad Sattouf: Well, you’ll find out by reading the comic! We have to keep the mystery (laughs)…
Another member of your family is at the center of your new comic strip with the evocative title: “Me, Fadi, the stolen brother”…
Riad Sattouf: Yes! I tell the story of my brother Fadi, whom I did not see for twenty years, then whom I found again during the Syrian civil war… but I do not want to say too much so as not to reveal his fate to those who have not read The Arab of the future. When I started my autobiographical story in 2014, I already wanted to tell his story which I only discovered in 2011. Today, I give him the floor.
And it’s once again the opportunity to explore a childhood… Why is this your favorite subject?
Riad Sattouf: Showing the world from a child’s perspective, I can’t think of anything more exciting. What interests me is to understand how an individual evolves and develops. How education shapes the psyches, and those of the generations that follow. Whether with members of my multicultural family or with an uneventful middle-class Parisian with Esther’s Notebooksor Vincent Lacoste, revealed in my film The Beautiful Kids and whose beginnings I recount in The Young Actor.
We won’t see you age in your comics then?
Riad Sattouf: (Laughs.) You should never say never… You know, I don’t project myself, I don’t really intellectualize what I do, it’s a deep part of me that decides which book should happen.
The main dates in the biography of Riad Sattouf
May 5, 1978 Birth in Paris.
2000 First publication, Little Iceby Éric Corbeyran, whose drawings he creates.
In 2003he signs The Poor Adventures of Jeremyare the first solo album.
2009 Writes and directs The Beautiful Kidswon the César for best first film.
2014 First of six volumes in its series The Arab of the future.
2021 Creates his publishing house, Les Livres du futur.
2023 Grand Prize at the Angoulême festival for all of his work.
2024 Publish Me, Fadi, the stolen brotherand joined Our Time.
Find Riad Sattouf in Notre Temps every month
You can discover the life of Riad Sattouf’s mother each month in Our Time over the 4 pages of comics.
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