Building 5Ladj Ly continues his work
No longer in Montfermeil but still a little, more police violence but another authority whose abuses threaten… And again, always, these stairs on which Ladj Ly loves to place his cameras, to show the narrowness and difficulty of an ascent – or a descent -, reaching out to people and showing them the effort, in their authentic life. And what’s better than a ladder to show the naked truth ? She ended up on the stairs Unfortunateand it is from the stairs that it begins Building 5. This time it is no longer a question of entering somewhere, but of leaving it, voluntarily or by force.
This is the story of Building 5that of a deputy mayor promoted overnight to mayor and involved in a redevelopment plan which involves the destruction of a residential tower, and that ofHaby, a young resident of the neighborhood invested in its preservation, activist and very involved in the community life of her city. Another story than that of his great success UnfortunateBut the same intensity and the same penetrating gaze with a strong visual impact on the social realities of which Ladj Ly has become an important and precious observer.
We met him, with his actor Alexis Manenti, who went from a very nervous leader of a BAC group to a young right-wing mayor intoxicated by power, to go into the details of the making of their new film.
Unfortunate it was a great success. How this successful condition was born Building 5to the point that one has the impression that there are more means and less “spectacle”, but still the same intensity?
Ladj Ly : It remains in the Kourtrajmé vein, but obviously we had more resources than that Unfortunate, which we did on a very small budget. Let’s say that here we had a “normal” budget to make a film of this caliber. There’s energy, people, we have four characters, sets… Even in terms of equipment, cameras, what we could do technically, it was a pleasure to have these means to express ourselves.
But unlike the Miserable, which had this “punching film” aspect, car on shoulder, here the topic I wanted to deal with, bad housing, implied being calmer, with a more political topic, and it was a challenge for me to go through with it anyway out on the scene. We took the time to do it, and with my operations manager we were really up to the task, because we knew that after a success like Unfortunate we were expected. It was necessary to guarantee.
As for Unfortunatethe problem of Building 5 is it updating a collective situation that you have personally experienced?
Ladj Ly : Yes, the idea of this story is to tell these neighborhoods, what I was able to experience there. In writing Unfortunate we realized that the subjects are numerous, very dense, and that it would be difficult to tell everything in a single film. From there, we said we were going to make a trilogy, with Unfortunate the idea of then moving on to poor housing.
The issue of housing poverty was close to my heart because I experienced it personally, I grew up in this “Building 5”, I was rehoused, and this personal issue for me also concerns many people in France, as well as abroad. We realize that these problems exist in every major city around the world.
Alexis Manenti, you play one of the two main roles, that of the mayor of this suburban town. A very different character than the one you played Unfortunate. How did you compose it?
Alessio Manenti : We worked a lot upstream with Ladj, and I did some tests. We worked a lot on his language, on his way of speaking. Like we did with this Chris character Unfortunatean important character, we especially wanted the same thing not to happen again.
It’s difficult when you have a certain phrasing, a voice, a physique, to transform yourself into a new character and people believe it.
For the character of Pierre we were inspired by different physical personalities. I wanted to opt for something modern, something ostentatious and a little aggressive, but Ladj brought me back to the opposite: a discreet character, rather cowardly, shy, an ordinary person with a normal life. Until he gains power and becomes someone else. The trajectory is very interesting.
Can we become attached to a character like this?
Alessio Manenti : I don’t know how to get attached, but I had fun playing it. It’s complex. We see in his private life that he is different, and we understand how we can get involved in the political world when we are not, how exhilarating it becomes, how we have to deal with the expectations of a political party and citizens, the local political situation. We cut some things in the edit, because it’s the game, but he’s a very complex character and I loved playing him that way.
The writing of Building 5 is very ambitious, with several characters whose opposing trajectories respond to each other with a certain symmetry. There is the trajectory of Roger (Steve Tientcheu) and that of Blaz (Aristote Luyindula), that of Pierre and that of Haby (Anta Diaw)…
Ladj Ly : It’s not easy to write a film with this choral dimension, where you move from one character to another. You have to find the right balance. For the point to be true, all of these characters need to be strong and developed. The writing required a lot of work, so that the story was told through all these characters, without losing the thread or getting bored. It’s a real challenge that I took on with my co-writer and I think we’re pretty happy with the outcome.
For the character of Haby it seemed important to me to have this female, black, militant character, which we rarely see in the cinema. Her role is very important in her neighborhood, she fights every day, manages associations, and is a character of hope who will one day come to power.
In terms of rising to power, his path is opposite to that of Alexis Manenti’s character.
Does each of you remember a particular moment from filming, a sequence that left a mark on you?
Ladj Ly : I would say the evacuation scene, because there were more than 200 extras and we had an entire tower available to stage it. And walking on the stairs is always complex, it’s cramped, there are people. We were able to do a real fire there, because this tower was about to be destroyed, and we had three weeks to insert all these sequences, with all these figurations. It’s a scene that I really like.
Alessio Manenti : I remember the final scene, which was very difficult to make. We finished shooting with the final sequence of the film, at night, it was -4°C and we were all outside. It was the end of the film and Aristotle Luyindula’s performance was truly incredible. We shot it several times, we did some research together and it was a really memorable scene for me.
Source: Cine Serie
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