Angelina Woreth, Paul Kircher, Louis Memmi and Sayyid El Alami, the energizing and magnetic band of Their children after them

It all started with a text from the producers, Hugo Sélignac and Alain Attal: “You received the Marcello Mastroianni prize! » No time to think. On September 7, a few days after the presentation of Their Children after them At the Venice Film Festival, Paul Kircher was once again on a plane, heading to the City of the Doges. The same evening, on stage at the Palazzo del Cinema, the 22-year-old actor received this trophy for best hope, under the watchful eye of the film's directors, the Boukherma brothers. “He worked a lot for this role,” emphasizes Zoran Boukherma. In particular, he worked with a coach to learn how to occupy space differently depending on the age, because he plays the same character from 14 to 20 years old. » A consecration for this young actor, still unknown two years ago. “It was a great way to close the festival,” he observed a month later in a café in Paris. Especially being rewarded by such a fine jury, made up of James Gray and Isabelle Huppert. »

Cinema family

Humility obliges, Paul Kircher reminds us: this victory is also that of the team. Because he is not the only one to carry this event feature film, adaptation of the novel by Nicolas Mathieu, awarded the Goncourt Prize in 2018. He shares the bill with established stars, such as Ludivine Sagnier or Gilles Lellouche, but also other hopefuls of French cinema: Sayyid El Alami, Angelina Woreth and Louis Memmi. Everyone devoured this fresco on the transition to adulthood and social determinism. They all dreamed of being centerpieces of its big screen adaptation. All of them torpedoed the competition throughout the castings, each role having been coveted by around thirty, even forty suitors. Zoran Boukherma, initially unfamiliar with their filmography, was surprised by the breadth of their talent: “We have rarely worked with such technical actors. They were able to respond immediately to details of direction, to change a comma or intonation. »

Alchemy cannot be invented. Off set, Their Children after themit is also the story of a group who formed strong bonds over the course of a long shoot or perhaps more. In the differences, as in a shared vision of the environment: “They have a perception of the profession very different from that of the young actors I usually meet,” observes Paul Kircher. They are very grounded in reality. » Louis Memmi, 23, with a baby face still surrounded by curls, grew up far from Parisian considerations. “I come from Corte, a small town in the Corsican mountains,” he explains. I experienced, like the characters in the film, summers doing nothing, hanging out at the lake and the river, riding bikes…” He was first spotted by a casting director for a short -film, before giving up everything, after the baccalaureate, to take acting lessons in Paris. “At the beginning, we were made to do the cloud. I said to myself: what am I doing here? » Next will come an important role in Borgoby Stéphane Demoustier, an experience that deepens his passion and understanding of the profession. From now on, each time he returns to the country, he is welcomed like a mascot. How do his friends view this new life? “They talk to me for five minutes about Venice or about a certain film they saw me in. But then we come back to very concrete things. »

Is being well surrounded the secret to finding a place in such a competitive sector? In this game, Paul Kircher, the youngest of the quartet, benefits from a major advantage: he grew up in a cinema family, with actor parents, Jérôme Kircher and Irène Jacob. What prepare him for the torments of the profession? “We rarely have these kinds of discussions, in reality. The only difference is that in their time, you really spent your day waiting by the landline. » To hear him say, Paul Kircher went through “a lot of castings, and failed the majority of them”. He has also developed a whole theory on the attitude to adopt: being natural, having perspective, proving that we are “malleable” to the director's vision. He entered the 7th art through the front door by landing, at the age of 19, a series of leading roles in Did you fish?, The High School StudentThen The Animal Kingdoma box office phenomenon in 2023. A favorable conjunction of talents and encounters. He mentions his agent, Grégory Weill, to whom he has absolute confidence, but also the goodwill of his playing partners: Juliette Binoche immediately took him under her wing, Romain Duris was open to his proposals. Without forgetting Christophe Honoré who, after offering him a role in The High School Studentwill soon play it in the theater in The Idols. He is aware, however, that the fall is more brutal when you live at a hundred miles an hour: “I don't want to always be looking for the next shot of adrenaline. »

Unpredictable and violent, the daily life of an actor reflects an era where everything goes quickly and everything is quickly forgotten, at a time when the proliferation of streaming platforms favors the frenetic development of French series. For Sayyid El Alami, revealed in the big production Messiah (Netflix) and the moving mini-series Oussekine (Disney +), the profusion of content does not necessarily benefit the actors: “There are more projects and therefore fewer quality projects. Or else, they are drowned in the mass, whereas they would have been classics twenty years ago. » After his first steps on the small screen, this autodidact from Toulouse has just taken two very different roles to the cinema: a high school student in mourning for his father, who takes refuge in motocross, in The Pampasigned by his friend and favorite director Antoine Chevrollier. And the character of Hacine in Their Children after themwhere his investment was once again total: “Lounès Tazaïrt, who plays his father, is of Kabyle origin,” explains Zoran Boukherma. However, the character in the book is Moroccan. He therefore translated certain dialogues into the right language and worked on them with the actor. We felt that it was important to him that everything was right. » The authenticity of the game above all. Between two castings, he always stays one step ahead, taking advantage of downtime to perfect his English. And dreams of expanding internationally, both with Joachim Trier, the Safdie brothers, and with Iranian filmmakers like Saeed Roustayi. In the meantime, Sayyid maintains a very pragmatic relationship with his career and his finances, remnants of a childhood spent in a modest environment. There is no room for extravagance in this actor who rejects the game of appearances: “I understood very early on that I had to be careful. This continues with me today. »