Des Vivants on France 2: ‘It was a real writing challenge’… Director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade talks about his new miniseries adapted from a true story.

After the critical success of Laetitia and Sambre, Jean-Xavier de Lestrade returns this Monday, November 3 on France 2 with Des Vivants, a mini-series that follows the fate of seven Bataclan survivors.

In this case, AlloCiné spoke to the author and director to tell us a little more about this ambitious piece of fiction.

AlloCiné: After working on Laetitia and then Sambre, why did you agree to work on Des vivants, which is still not an easy task?

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade : No, I’m sure it’s not an easy topic again. And I can’t say that I fell into the project with great appetite.

But I wanted to make a TV series because it seemed necessary. I thought it was the right time for fiction to take hold of this story and tell it.

I think if the series had been made earlier, the victims would not have liked it. But today the time for mourning, reflection and justice has passed.

Now is the time to remember. And I believe that fiction has a very important role to play in telling this collective story around a drama that has affected everyone.

The series is adapted from a real group of hostages. I imagine you have met them. What was the process of researching and writing the series like?

We made a completely new work together with my co-author Antoine Lacomble. We limited ourselves to write scripts for the series only with soup shows.

So we met them all for a few hours a year. We also met the BRI men, as well as the psychologist who followed the hostages and who was also present at the Bataclan.

We wanted to have these sources exclusively. So, obviously, there is nothing spectacular about these testimonials. Apart from what they experienced this evening, nothing obeys the classical principles of dramaturgy.

So it was very difficult to build it in such a way that the audience was attached to them and wanted to follow them in the reconstruction. It was a real writing challenge.

One of the qualities of the series is that it never falls into pathos. How do we find a happy medium that tells the story without too much crying?

That was the point of the series. We wanted to show that life is what it is, with all its paradoxes and contradictions. We can get together to talk seriously about what happened at the Bataclan, and then three lines later we can tell a joke that makes everyone laugh.

We wanted to find the right balance between all that life has to offer. They are victims. They have to live with this drama and it’s not easy. But this does not exclude humor and joy.

And it was exploring this richness that was fascinating about the series. In the end, we think we know everything about the victims, but when we take a closer look, we realize that this journey is always unexpected.

What we think we expect never happens. For example, the reactions of those around them vary greatly from one survivor to another. That was the exciting build.

You already worked with Alix Poisson on Sambre. Was it clear that he called you again?

I had casting ideas from the beginning. I quickly thought of Benjamin Lavernay for the character of Arno. For Gregory, I had Antoine Reinartz. For Sebastien, I had Felix Moat because I knew he would work well energetically.

And once I had Benjamin Laverne, I had to find someone to play the wife. And I knew that Alix was energetically very close to Marie’s character.

But it also has to match Benjamin, because their story is really a couple’s story. We did some tests and it worked fine right away.

The strength of the series is also the complicity between the characters. Did you do tests with all the actors to make sure you had that consistency?

Yes, we did group reading. We read texts, but we also told each other stories. We wanted to create a form of complicity, but we must remember that apart from the couple Marie and Arno, they did not know each other before the tragedy.

They got to know each other little by little. So there should not be too much complicity in the beginning. But since they are very good actors, they slowly managed to build a relationship.

Catch the first two episodes of Des Vivants this Monday, November 3 from 9.10pm. The series on France 2 is now fully available on the france.tv platform.