“I get asked that a lot!” : Can it become a serious work series?

From the movie to the TV series? This is the path that Thomas Lilly has already taken, with the Hippocrates film, which became the Hippocrates series, with undeniable success. The show has had two great seasons and is currently writing and filming a third.

Could Thomas Lilly be using the same idea with his new film, A Serious Job? The feature film offers a great gallery of characters that we are attached to and that I enjoy seeing… So, serious profession, a series soon? We asked the screenwriter and director Thomas Lilti a question.

“I get asked this a lot. This is clearly related to the fact that there was Hippocrates. But why didn’t you ask me this question earlier? I think it has to do with writing itself as a serious profession. The fact that we have an arena that is college. The fact that we follow a lot of teachers makes it a group film.

Obviously, I would love to do a series on teachers and teaching!

True, it looks like a TV series! Even if there is some behind-the-camera work that I really like in the film that I tried to feed off of. We don’t know everything about our characters. It’s a habit that viewers have lost a bit with the series. You couldn’t give them everything in the film. This is very related to the series, where we tell everything about the characters. We dug even the slightest gap. And I like the idea that I don’t know everything.

I know that a somewhat polyphonic story draws you in, or suggests the idea that it could be a TV series. Obviously, I would love to do a series about teachers, teaching, which might be more or less similar to this movie, a little bit different, like the Hippocrates series has big differences with the Hippocrates movie. Even if we find the same world and the same script.

I admit it’s something I really want to do in the series, but it’s not on the agenda at all. I didn’t have that in mind at all when I made the film, and I still don’t have it in mind today..”

Find Thomas Lilt’s full answer in our podcast interview:

As Thomas Lilt explains in this podcast, the idea behind the film was to take a different look at school. “There are many movies about school. There are many movies about extraordinary teachers. There are movies showing extraordinary teaching methods with sensational teachers..

There are many films by students that depict the difficulties of teaching. I took the opposite side. I said to myself: What I want to talk about is this college, which we never talk about and yet is the most common.“.

and added: “This is a college where, after all, things don’t go so badly. There are some things that are difficult, but the college we are talking about in the news is not the majority of French colleges and fortunately.

Under the auspices of fiction, I wanted to put my cameras in an ordinary college, with teachers who have a sense of commitment, who still have a lot of taste for their profession and suffer because the work is very difficult. But they still believe it. This was the overall theme and the main motivation for making this film..”

The history of a serious profession looks like this: he returned to school. A new school year at the college where Pierre, Maryam, Fouad, Sophie, Sandrine, Alix and Sofian meet a group of dedicated and united teachers. They are joined by Benjamin, a young substitute teacher who has no experience and quickly encounters the difficulties of the profession. Through contact with them, he discovers how much the passion for teaching remains alive in a weakened institution.

A serious profession is currently in the cinema.