Tonight on TV: Omar Sy gives one of his best performances and is applauded by over 3 million viewers

If you were asked to name the collaboration between the duo Eric Toledano / Olivier Nakache and Omar Sy, you would immediately (and logically) answer the essential untouchables. But let’s not forget the excellent Samba, a comedy-drama that hit theaters in 2014 to quickly (re)discover!

Adaptation of the novel Samba for France By Delphine Cullin, published by Editions du Seuil in 2011, the feature film, which attracted more than 3 million viewers to cinemas, tells the story of samba.Omar C), a Senegalese in France for 10 years, picking up odd jobs, and Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a senior executive, from exhaustion.

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He tries his best to get her papers, while she tries to rebuild her life by volunteering at the association. Everyone is trying to get out of the deadlock until the day their fates cross… Between humor and emotion, their story creates a different path to happiness. If life had more imagination than them?

Although the story of Samba is mainly inspired by a novel, the two directors, who recently released A Difficult Year, have had the idea of ​​making a film for a long time. “Those workers we see outside the restaurants smoking in their kitchen aprons – Africans, Asians, Sri Lankans, taking a few minutes’ rest”As Toledano explains.

Samba, a highly successful social comedy, is a film that finds the perfect balance between seriousness and comedy without falling into pathos. Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache did extensive research to write and create this humane work. That’s how they did internships in associations and watched documentaries. Thus, each character in the film was inspired by a real person he met during the development of the project.

Eric Toledano explains that his desire was not to discuss the political side of the topic, but only to highlight it “Faces in Statistics” which, as he points out, “It allows the audience, through the characters and their daily lives, to discover a world that they often don’t know except through public debate and the media. And from there, it can give them a reason to think differently.” Olivier Nakache concludes: We wanted to capture today’s invisible workers in their environment.

Finally, note that Omar Sai prepared for the role of Samba by watching Moussa Toure’s La Pirogue and reading about immigration: “I wanted to understand the motivations of the people who go so that they arrive safely”– says the actor.

Tonight on C8 at 9.20pm.

Charlotte Gainsbourg talks about comedy: