On the occasion of the release of “Survivors”, here are five things to know about this mountain and political survival led by Denis Ménochet and Zar Amir Ebrahimi.
The Survivors by Guillaume Renusson
With Denis Ménochet, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Victoire Du Bois…
What is it about ? Samuel leaves to isolate himself in his chalet in the heart of the Italian Alps. One night, a young woman takes refuge in his home, trapped by the snow. She is Afghan and wants to cross the mountain to reach France. Samuel doesn’t want trouble but, faced with his distress, decides to help him. He is then far from suspecting that beyond the hostility of nature, it is that of men that they will have to face…
Birth of the project
Velvet Films – Baxter Films – Pierre Maïllis-Laval
The Survivors is Guillaume Renusson’s first feature film. He previously directed three short films, as well as season 2 of 3615 Monique, on the invention of the pink Minitel. The filmmaker explains how this snowy survival was born:
“When I was a student, I accompanied a family who came from Angola, a mother and her two children. The father had died. I took care of their administrative procedures and I accompanied the children in school support. “
“In Paris, I was in an association where I made short films with exiles. I was struck to see that the dynamics of mourning as we know it was similar to the mourning of their country.”
“With Clément Peny, my co-screenwriter, we imagined a scene one day: that of a man giving the identity card of his deceased wife to a refugee to allow her to try to cross a border. There was in my opinion the concentration of a lot of issues, at the same time social, political, intimate…”
“I think that’s the scene I made this movie for, it was always there, the script was built around it.”
The heroine of the “Nights of Mashhad”
Velvet Films – Baxter Films – Pierre Maïllis-Laval
Guillaume Renusson chose Zar Amir Ebrahimi to play Chehreh. Shortly after, the actress won the prize for female interpretation at Cannes for Les Nuits de Mashhad: “We wanted an unknown face. If Zar is known in Iran, she was unknown in France. In the casting, she played her essay looking me straight in the eye. She was not fearful or victimized but very strong.”
“I said to myself that facing the colossus with feet of clay that is Samuel, it was good that there was this seemingly frail but resilient woman. Zar also has the ability to change his face: the three times where I saw her in the casting, I felt like I saw three different women… It was good for the film, because the idea was that Chehreh would become more and more Samuel’s deceased wife. ”
Prestigious references
Velvet Films – Baxter Films – Pierre Maïllis-Laval
On the reference side, Guillaume Renusson quotes Essential Killing by Jerzy Skolimowski, a film “exciting about tracking down in a war situation”. The director specifies: “We were talking about a duo, and a magnificent example is Dersou Ouzala by Akira Kurosawa, I was thinking about it when writing: two characters who are opposites and who become friends. It’s a heartbreaking film about the friendship, nature.”
“I could also quote Gerry by Gus Van Sant, the last part of La Grande illusion by Jean Renoir. And then Le Grand silence by Sergio Corbucci, a western in the snow: the silence of the Survivors referred to this film which inspired. I am also thinking of The Revenant of course, or Un Lac by Philippe Grandrieux, a difficult film but a real slap in the face.”
Hard !
Velvet Films – Baxter Films – Pierre Maïllis-Laval
Guillaume Renusson and his team shot The Survivors in the snow, at the mercy of the real weather conditions in the Southern Alps: “We had to adapt all the time and respect the considerable impact of logistics on the artistry. We talked about the scene where Denis changes Zar to save her from hypothermia… In the morning, impossible to climb the trucks, the canteen, the ground was so frozen!”
“We had to bring in tractors, we were four hours late. My planned cut broke, I had to rethink everything. Denis was mobilizing the troops, shouting: ‘What happens on D-Day happens on D-Day!’ We then shot the scene in sequence, we rehearsed the movements, then we worked on it for five hours. Denis and Zar gave their all, it was intense.”
Who for the bad guys?
Velvet Films – Baxter Films – Pierre Maïllis-Laval
The stalkers are played by Luca Terracciano, Oscar Copp and Victoire Du Bois. Guillaume Renusson wanted three actors with a “normal” physique, as he explains: “We are not faced with sinister shaved heads. I had seen a selfie of a young couple from Génération Identitaire who claimed to apply the law to the Franco-Italian border: she was made up, with a pink puffer jacket, they looked like an ordinary little couple.
“I wanted my “villains” not to be scary at first sight. Victoire, I had seen her in other films and I knew she could play this character, which is a real compositional role insofar as it is located at the exact opposite of his convictions. In fact, the three young people are overwhelmed by their violence and the violence of Samuel that they have aroused. I wanted The Survivors to be a genre film rooted in the real.”
These three characters are both inspired by current events on the Alpine border and by the militias on the American-Mexican border which evoke the western: “The world is polarizing, radicalizing, we know that. The border is a kind of thermometer of the social state of a country.”
“While scouting, I met supportive people, mountaineers who, like sailors, don’t let anyone drown, but I also came up against indifference and xenophobia. I wanted to question this violence, until where it can twist. And the genre has imposed itself on the writing”, specifies the filmmaker.