Paris, early 1980s. The city was then the playground of a new phenomenon of slicked-back bands looking like James Dean. On one side, there are the Rascals, a gang of young people from the suburbs in flocked jackets, who take advantage of their carelessness. In front of them, the extreme right is gaining ground throughout the country. At a record store, Ahmed, who calls himself Rico, recognizes a skin that had attacked him and decides to take justice into his own hands. Witness of the scene, the young sister of the skin will get closer to an extremist student who promises revenge against the Rascals. As the far right gains ground across the country, the band of friends gets caught up in a spiral. It’s the end of innocence. The director of the film, Jimmy Laporal-Trésor, declined his short film Soldat noir, selected last year for the Césars to make this first feature film committed against racism in an aesthetic West Side Story style. He was inspired by the photographs of the photoreporter Jacques Chancel who documented, between the winter of 1982 and the spring of 1983, the peregrinations of the bands at the origin of the Antifa movement and of the French youth of the 80s, that of the Mitterrand years but also unemployment and the National Front. See also on Konbini We discussed with the young real ‘the short films selected for the CésarLes Rascals will be in theaters on January 11, 2023.
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