The third season of “Hippocrates” will be launched this evening on CANAL+ with, in the cast, Louise Bourgoin, Alice Belaïdi, Karim Leklou and Bouli Lanners. And to get to the heart of the behind-the-scenes of the series, here are 3 anecdotes on the medical saga of Thomas Lilti.
The series was produced by a doctor
Before entering the world of the 7th art and signing a medical triptych with “Hippocrates”, Thomas Lilti was… a doctor. If the director has swapped his blouse for almost 20 years to devote himself to fiction, he has not forgotten reality, after years spent walking the corridors of medical college and hospitals. A most atypical double hat, to meet the demands of his father, also a doctor, who did not view his cinema dreams favorably.A past to the rhythm of stretchers and sanitized premises, which Thomas Lilti found during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was also when he returned to the hospital center that he had the idea for this third season, which tells the story of the state of the hospital in the aftermath of the pandemic. And this is not the filmmaker’s first creation infused with the medical world, since he was also at the helm of the films “Hippocrates”, “First Year” and “Country Doctor”.
doctors see Louise Bourgoin as a colleague
By playing the character of Chloé Antovska, anesthesia-resuscitation intern, Louise Bourgoin did not expect fiction to surpass reality. Since the release of the series in 2018, doctors who come across the former “Grand Journal” weather miss have almost come to consider her as a colleague. “I have had to call SOS Médecins several times for my children, and they speak to me as if I were a doctor! They use very complex terms as if I had studied medicine, it’s very surprising,” she told the media Diverto.A simulacrum partly due to the demands of Thomas Lilti. After intensive readings of the script, the director imposed episodes of the series “Emergencies” on the cast in order to assimilate technical gestures, such as cardiac massage. “Thomas is very attached to the verisimilitude of gestures. He taught us to imitate him down to the least visible details on camera,” said Louise Bourgoin. “He took me back when air bubbles remained in the syringe, he treated us like interns,” she added. A realism which facilitates the immersion of the spectator during medical procedures, and which makes “Hippocrates” a credible standard to the crisis in the hospital sector.
A REAL HOSPITAL AS A DECOR, CAREGIVERS BECOME FIGURES
To increase the credibility of the medical series, the film crews took over the corridors of the Robert-Ballanger hospital, in Aulnay-sous-Bois, more commonly called the “Chirb” (for Robert-Ballanger Intercommunal Hospital Center). The series was filmed almost entirely in the disused wings of the building. It was therefore possible for anxious patients and doctors in a hurry to come across actors or technicians with arms full of equipment. Cohabitation pushed to the screen, since real nurses and caregivers have swapped ECG monitors for cameras. “’Hippocrates’ owes a lot to the hundreds of extras who worked during this marathon shoot. Many of them coming from the medical world, they help to give this feeling of realism to the series,” confided Thomas Lilty. A hospital environment dear to the director, who chose to donate the medical equipment used in the shots, such as gloves, gowns or masks.
“Hippocrates”, season 3, to be discovered from this Monday, November 11 at 9:10 p.m. on Canal+.
