Adrian Delage | You have lived in the United States for more than ten years. As a French director, is it always so complicated to make films on American soil?See also on KonbiniJean-Stéphane Sauvaire | It’s especially complicated because we have a different way of making films in France. There, it was a “union” film, that is to say a union film, closer to the Hollywood industry. We have big teams and certain restrictions which are the opposite of my cinema, which is closer to documentaries, where I try to capture life, reality and work with non-professionals. The film is adapted from a book by Shannon Burke [911, paru en 2008, ndlr], which takes place in Harlem in the 1990s. The author describes his experience as an ambulance driver, while trying to pass the medical examination. From the start, I said to myself that it absolutely had to be adapted to our times. First, because I didn’t want to recreate the atmosphere of the 1990s, then because I wanted to talk about the contemporary world. The unions trusted me and the construction of the film went well, even if it was a new experience for me that was not easy to approach. Where does this gloomy and anxiety-provoking vision of New York come from, like a counter- foot to that rather fantasized of American cinema? I don’t know if it’s such a dark vision of New York, I feel like I’m simply filming my life [rires]. It’s a very personal film, because I shot most of the scenes in Brooklyn at my house or in the neighborhood. Everything happens in my neighborhood with people from my neighborhood. It may seem gloomy to you, but it’s my everyday life! When I moved to New York 14 years ago, I said to myself that we were fascinated by this city thanks to the cinema. We think of Abel Ferrara, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, William Friedkin or even John Cassavetes. I wanted to pay homage to them and honor this city by offering a postcard vision of New York with Coney Island, the bridges, the suspended metro as seen in French Connection [film policier de William Friedkin sorti en 1971, ndlr] notably. I also wanted to avoid the fantasy pitfalls of Manhattan and Sex and the City, which I find unrealistic. And at the same time, I was surprised by the reality of life on its streets. It’s an amazing city, which has a particular energy, like a kind of tower of Babel where cultures and religions mix. And on the other side, some struggle to survive it, there is a third world aspect in the sense that people are left to fend for themselves. New York is the city where anything can happen. People go there for a specific reason, as if it were an accomplishment. And that’s what gives it this unique energy, it’s a unique place. Through the eyes of the paramedics, it also allowed me to bring a different point of view to the city. Most of the time, for example, the police are quite clichéd as characters, they are often corrupt and linked to the worlds of gangsters or drug dealers, where the paramedics plunge into people’s intimacy. like a body: with the avenues of New York as arteries, the red of the flashing lights like blood, just to make it something almost visceral and very immersive. I heard that the screenplay had first been entrusted to Darren Aronofsky. That’s right, Aronofsky had acquired the rights to adapt the novel. But I never read his script. And like Tye Sheridan [qui incarne Ollie Cross, le héros de Black Flies, ndlr] knows him, he ended up showing him the film. So we had some notes from him at the end of the edit. Besides, Tye has also shown it to Terrence Malick, Jeff Nichols and Rick Alverson, trusted directors with whom he has already worked. Which is always pleasant for a filmmaker at the end of editing, because you need an outside perspective. In this case, they were very benevolent and encouraged us to make the film in this way. I found that there was special work on the sound mixing and sound design of Black Flies, that the sliders were deliberately pushed into the projection room like Christopher Nolan had done for Dunkirk. Was it also a desire on your part to improve the feelings of immersion? Yes, and it’s above all that I like the sound to be loud when I watch a film. I want it to reverberate in the body. As I said, the film also tells a story of the body, of how uniformed paramedics treat their patient’s bodies. I wanted actors and spectators to share this same relationship of confrontation. And the sound allows you to feel a presence, a vibration inside that transcends what you see on the screen, to better experience the scene without falling into overstatement and the sensationalism that you could support through the image. .Nicolas Becker, who did the music, is great at mixing sound design and instrumental compositions. I had already worked with him on A Prayer Before Dawn and Punk and he is very good at facilitating the viewer’s immersion through sound. It is also something that is sorely lacking in today’s series, where there is always more dialogue in order to tell a story over ten hours mainly through words. In the cinema, I prefer to avoid words like Hitchcock did. And in a room like the Grand Théâtre Lumière in Cannes, with a giant screen and excellent sound quality, you couldn’t dream of a better place to watch a film like Black Flies. You navigate quite a bit between genres during the film. A thriller, a social drama, almost a horror film at times… How would you define the genre of Black Flies? As a director, I’m not particularly a fan of genre films. But strangely, I often confronted it as with my previous film, A Prayer Before Dawn which takes place in a prison universe. It’s a prison film, where I try to extricate myself from the genre film. It’s a bit the same with Black Flies, which could be considered a thriller set in New York but which I see more as a very personal work, which pays homage to the great filmmakers who filmed this city. It’s true that there is a sort of mixture of genres in Black Flies, but because I like, as a spectator, different styles of cinema. The social drama, the documentary, the horror film… Except maybe the comedy, where I really struggle. There are, however, a few lighter, almost comical scenes between the characters of Tye Sheridan and Sean Penn, in particular when they talk in the ambulance. Because it’s the reality. You should know that New York paramedics have a lot of humor. I worked with them for two years, often staying in the back of the ambulance, following them through the streets of Brooklyn. And we often laughed, even if I also saw people lose their lives there, who did not survive the interventions. Besides, almost all the cases in the film are from real experience, some that I saw with my own eyes. I wanted to be able to transcribe them and understand them as closely as possible. And to protect themselves from all that, they need this sense of humor. There’s one subject you can’t joke about: 9/11. There, you feel that there is a real emotion and the sobs that come right away, that the trauma never really left. You mean that even the very shocking scene of childbirth is true? , I did not experience it, but it is transcribed in Shannon Burke’s novel. To tell you, it’s even the first case he faced on his first day as a paramedic. I think it was this difficult situation in particular that prompted him to tell his story in the book. There were also more gunshot wounds due to the settling of scores and gang wars, as the story was set in the midst of the crack epidemic. I know that you regularly work with non-professional actors. Was it also the case with Black Flies? Almost all the secondary characters that you see in the film are non-professional actors. I’ve always worked like that, already in Johnny Mad Dog with former soldiers from the Liberian war, then in A Prayer Before Dawn with prisoners in Thailand. In Black Flies, most of the patients you see have had experiences of suffering. Because they don’t need to speak, their marked bodies do it for them, evoke their past, their culture, their religion, whether through wounds, scars or even tattoos. By filming them, I I also feel like I’m giving them a chance to testify, to share their own life experience. I am thinking in particular of the scene in the laundromat, where a woman refuses to come out; she actually lives in my neighborhood. I’ve known her for a long time and when I asked her to appear in the film, she was happy to be able to show what she is without playing a character. They are really amazing and they bring a great deal of reality to the film, which I couldn’t have infused without them. This is the third time that you have come to defend a film at Cannes. First with Johnny Mad Dog in the Un certain regard selection in 2008, then with A prayer before dawn in the midnight screening in 2017, and this year with Black Flies where you are selected in official competition. Do you experience it as an accomplishment? I see it as an additional step and I thank Thierry Frémaux and the festival for this selection. It’s both an honor and a bit creepy [rires]. But I’m happy to be in a new category and to be able to compete in the official competition. I’m also happy to take the cast there, especially for Sean and Tye. Whatever the competition, Cannes is an incredible place to show a film and give birth to your baby. We’ll see if it’s a baby that people want to cuddle, or if they’re going to throw it into the sea. A bit like the theme of Black Flies in the end.
