“Their children after them”, Goncourt by Nicolas Mathieu, adapted by the Boukherma brothers

This is the pranking side of twinhood: when they look at photos from their childhood, Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma don't always know who is one, who is the other. However, by observing them during an hour and a half of exchanges, in a Parisian café, we believe we detect slightly more angular features in Ludovic, more rounded in Zoran. But without certainty.

At 32 years old, these two brothers from Lot-et-Garonne have already directed four feature films together. Their new production “Their children after them”, in theaters on December 4, is one of the events of this fall at the cinema. They are reaching a milestone, in terms of budget (12 million euros), casting (Paul Kircher, Gilles Lellouche, Ludivine Sagnier), issues (this is the adaptation of the novel by Nicolas Mathieu, Goncourt and big success of the year 2018).

For a more readable format of this interview, we have amalgamated their comments, under the generic name “Ludovic and Zoran”. This ease does not betray the conversation: these two close brothers often speak in unison. They almost systematically say “we”.

How did this film project come into your life?

Ludovic et Zoran. Producer Hugo Selignac had purchased the rights to the book, and wanted to produce an adaptation in series form, directed by Gilles Lellouche. Gilles, who liked our first film “Teddy”, offered to co-write the series. But as he was very mobilized by “L’amour Ouf”, we took over the project. And we said to ourselves that this story deserved the big screen. We also feared, perhaps wrongly, the working conditions in a “series” format, we feared running out of time.

Have you read Nicolas Mathieu’s book?

Yes, and loved it very much. It's a great social novel, almost a 21^e Rougon-Macquart! We found a lot of our adolescence there. The France of books, a post-industrial Vosges valley, is not the rural France of our native Lot-et-Garonne, but we come from a modest, working-class background. In the film, we talk about our parents, about us.

Was Nicolas Mathieu involved in writing the screenplay?

No, on the contrary, he often told us “do your own thing!” »

Goldman, NTM, the Red Hot… You rely a lot on music to reconstruct the 1990s, which you knew little about since you were very young…

It is not because the story talks about class reproduction and the effects of deindustrialization that we cannot offer breath, pleasure, emotions. And music contributes to that. We wanted a generous film, in line with our tastes. We didn't grow up in a family connected to arthouse cinema. We grew up with Hollywood films. “Titanic”, “Forrest Gump”… Our first relationship with cinema was through emotion. We are keen to access this emotion, and to make feature films aimed at the general public.

We will never feel completely Parisian

What was your childhood like?

We were born in Marmande, then we grew up in Port-Sainte-Marie. Our mother looked after children at home, or worked as a counselor at the leisure center. Our father, a refrigeration engineer, repaired air conditioners and cold rooms. As children, we were happy to be in the countryside, to ride bikes, to play in nature. But as teenagers, we were bored! Like Anthony in the movie. The summers seemed endless to us… Our fantasy was to go to the United States.

What was your path from Port-Sainte-Marie to the very closed world of cinema?

Our parents always pushed us to express our sensitivity. In Port-Sainte-Marie, we did theater and gym. We also drew a lot. We were very lonely. As teenagers, armed with a camcorder, we started editing and writing scenarios on the bus in the morning that took place in the United States. We looked at what the places looked like on Street View… Then after the baccalaureate, in 2011, we went to Paris. We were on scholarship, we had 500 euros per month. We went to an English school, Luc Besson's school, we shot little things, then a short film, which won an award at the Clermont-Ferrand festival in 2015. That's where we were spotted, that producers have contacted us. And there was the first feature film, “Willy 1st” in 2016, then “Teddy” in 2020 and “The Year of the Shark” in 2022.

In the film, social determinism limits the professional prospects of Anthony and his comrades, sons of workers. But your itinerary is completely free of it…

Yes but this is not the norm. Our journey allows some to say “meritocracy works”, or “when we want we can”. But these are fables… Unfortunately, very few of us come from the working classes into artistic and cultural circles. And then our success is the success of a clown, of an artist, without much at stake. We didn't do the ENA or HEC. We get imposter syndrome all the time. We have the impression of not having the literary or cinematic background…

In “Their Children After Them”, you take a tender but uncompromising look at life in working-class circles in the 1990s. Anthony happens to be racist. And the fathers are rough, even violent…

Respecting the people we are talking about also means talking about them without being pretentious. We cannot avoid racism and violence. Anthony's racism is a racism of circumstance: he reproduces things he hears in his family environment. As for the fathers, they feel diminished by unemployment and the closure of the Blast Furnaces. They love, but they love badly.

We usually meet at the café every morning at 7:30 a.m. to write. Being two motivates.

How do you work together?

We do everything together, at each stage, from writing to post-production.

Could you tour “solo”?

No, we don't really see ourselves working separately.

How, at 30, do you impose your authority on a shoot?

The work on set is very collective, pragmatic. We constantly interact with the team. When we have a doubt, we debate out loud so that everyone can propose their solution. We want at all costs to avoid the posture of the “all-powerful director” to whom no one dares to say anything.

You need self-confidence to take on the task of directing a feature film, where does it come from?

No doubt work, and a form of discipline. We are very introverted, we rarely go out, we are not evening people. We usually meet at the café every morning at 7:30 a.m. to write. We are better in the morning. Being two motivates. We know the other is waiting at the café.

Do you feel fully Parisian today?

No. We really have this thing about class defectors: one foot on each side. We will never completely belong to the Parisian world.

Over time, has your view of Lot-et-Garonne changed?

Yes, we see it very differently today, we perceive its beauty more, because we no longer feel captive. We won our freedom. You appreciate the place where you live much more when you know you can leave.

“Their children after them”, released December 4, 2:16 a.m.

A youth of the 1990s

“We’re bored!” » laments, staring at the camera with a look that is both lost and insolent, 14-year-old Anthony (Paul Kircher), in the first sequence of “Their children after them”. One hot afternoon, at the edge of a lake, he meets Stéphanie. Thunderbolt. To join her one evening, he secretly borrows his father's motorcycle. But when the next morning he notices that the motorcycle has disappeared, everything changes. The story follows the plot of Nicolas Mathieu's novel quite faithfully. The Boukherma brothers recount their youth, from 1992 to 1998, in a France devastated by deindustrialization. They chose an effective, musical, rhythmic and ample staging. This incandescent fresco moves with its evocation of adolescence, its fragility, its opacity, and its description of father-son relationships hindered by the unsaid, the awkwardness.