“I suffered a lot”: Ahmed Sila gained 10 kg to play a boxer

What is it about? Suleiman, 27, a boxing champion in full training for the Olympics with the French national team, sees his next collapse when he breaks bones in his hands after a bar fight. Suleiman is kicked out of the team and sent to the Château de Chambord, where he must complete his 400 hours of community service (TIG) by picking up waste in the gardens.

Initially indifferent to the place, Suleiman becomes fascinated by the castle, the people who work there, and especially Ed, the events manager, who transports him to another world. But his meeting with Melissa, a young teenager with a special talent for boxing, will throw his plans into question…

+ 10 kg for Ahmed Sila!

Ahmed Silas had to start dieting and physical training before shooting the film in order to establish real credibility as a boxer. Thus, the actor trained at the best club in France, where director Ali Marhiar himself trained in boxing, BAM l’Héritage des Mureaux. The latter entrusts: “Within a few weeks, the technical and physical progress was dazzling. Ahmed gained about ten kilos of muscle for the square build of a top-level boxer.”

The actor adds: “I started physical training with a trainer for another project to express my figure a little more. I had to sweat and master the atmosphere of this discipline. I had a few years left after I entered boxing. Before, but then I trained thoroughly three times a week for 1 hour 30 hours for three months I also did a lot of weight training to tone my abs and chest.

“I’m not an athlete, I suffered a lot. But I liked the adrenaline rush when you abuse yourself and I knew the more I suffered the better the result. Doing duty. Another evil. For good.”

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Boxing fan!

Ali Marhiar is a big fan of movies about boxing and the noble art. The director started playing this sport at the age of 17 and has long dreamed of becoming an Olympic champion. He recalls: “I could not fulfill this dream because my mother preferred me to stay at home instead of going far. I also have a great passion for history, especially French castles. I love imagining, feeling, visiting them. , what could have happened there centuries ago, we pass, the monuments remain”.

“These two worlds, the boxing gym and Chambord, are the framework of the film without me knowing about it. Like my character, I could not be an Olympic champion, but I became an actor. It was only during the shooting that I realized how much of myself I put into this film. “

At first…

Initially, Ali Marhiar wanted to play the main character in the film as a prince, but he did not want to direct the film under any circumstances: “I thought it was unattainable. And then Julien Guetta pushed me and said that I had such a precise vision of the project in terms of tone and rhythm that I absolutely had to go behind the camera. I couldn’t. Both acting and directing were too much to bear, so I chose to direct. I immediately thought of Ahmed Silla for his comic qualities, of course, but also for his deep sensitivity. I’ve never seen anyone else. But him.”

Training for Mallory Wanecque

Mallory Vaneke was barely credited for her many boxing scenes. The actor also trained a lot in the same club to learn the choreography of fights. “He took the shots sometimes without pretense. The kids going up against him on screen are, after all, all world champions in their age categories!”The filmmaker specifies.

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Boxing scenes and prison

Boxing scenes, especially those with spectators, were the most difficult to shoot for Ali Marhiar, even though most of the effects in the room or in the ring were professionals. Director says: “I put a lot of effort into it, it wasn’t to say that it seemed fake. I wrote a good part of the film in Chambord, a place I finally knew by heart. I spent a lot of time there, observing. I found a lot of ideas there, including the idea of ​​a narrator who exists on location, scenes I played in all settings.”

Chambord was the perfect location for the story, because the castle is built in the middle of a forest the size of Paris, and we had to isolate the character, lock him in a sinkhole, so he can’t even go to drink A. coffee.”