Belle and Sébastien New generation: who plays the young hero?


On the occasion of the release of “Belle and Sébastien: New Generation”, here are five things to know about this new adaptation of the cult series from the 1960s.

Belle and Sébastien: New generation of Pierre Coré

With Michèle Laroque, Robinson Mensah-Rouanet, Alice David…

What is it about ? 10-year-old Sébastien reluctantly spends his holidays in the mountains with his grandmother and aunt. He has to lend a hand at the sheepfold, nothing very exciting for a city boy like him… But that’s without counting on his encounter with Belle, a huge dog abused by her master. Ready to do anything to avoid injustice and protect his new friend, Sébastien is going to experience the craziest summer of his life.

Birth of the project

Thibault Grabherr

After L’Aventure des Marguerite (2020), Pierre Coré wanted to continue his collaboration with Radar Films. Producer Clément Miserez then submitted this idea to him to make a reboot of Belle and Sébastien by transposing the plot to the current era and reinventing the characters. Seduced by the project, the director wrote a screenplay with Alexandre Coffre (with whom he had collaborated on L’Aventure des Marguerite): “We always have more ideas together. With Alexandre, it’s easy and we bounce back from constructive way about the writing. He’s often more fussy about structure, and when I stray into too many digressions, he brings me back to the realities of dramaturgy. It’s a good safeguard.”

Find the new Sebastian


Thibault Grabherr

Casting director Sylvie Brocheré received more than 2,000 children’s videos which she filtered. Pierre Coré watched 120 with her and his choice fell on five children (all remotely and in the midst of a pandemic!). The filmmaker remembers: “At the end of the day, we brought the five boys to Paris, then we narrowed down our selection to three children with whom we worked with dogs. Some were afraid and others were not. Robinson Mensah -Rouanet seemed obvious to us. Although he had never acted before, he understood everything about a set, he is an innate actor. He exudes tremendous energy and he endured the nine weeks of filming at altitude. He’s still a kid but he already has that arrogance of pre-adolescence. He was initially afraid of dogs because he had been bitten in the face when he was little and he overcame his fear; I I was fascinated by his courage and his will. He embodies what I wanted in Sébastien: an adventurer ready for anything.”

Film the mountain


Thibault Grabherr

Pierre Coré wanted the viewer to feel the mountain like a character in the film. The director approached an animal photographer, Vincent Munier, who made The Snow Panther, and asked him to help him film the mountain. He explains: “I knew that I would not have time to film the animals, the night, the dew, the clouds which cling and the wind which slips on the set. I told him that I needed this mysterious “character” who is, I think, a promise of freedom. A dangerous freedom, not necessarily comfortable or benevolent, but a freedom. Vincent, with his strength, his poetry, his singular gaze shot all the plans nature. For the adventure part, I wanted to rediscover the salt of Amblin productions, with this vintage side.”

The presence of wolves


Thibault Grabherr

The wolves are a real source of adventure and embody both the challenge that awaits the characters and the desire of Belle. Just like the pressure of white gold – artificial snow –, the arrival of new predators in the mountains is a real ecological and societal challenge: “It’s not a fairy tale wolf but a creature with its advantages and disadvantages. We were lucky to have an incredible trainer by our side who was able to launch wolves on sheep in the middle of the night and everything went well even if we were terrified”, confides Pierre Coré.

Ecological aim


Thibault Grabherr

When writing this new story of Belle and Sébastien, the Pyrenees seemed obvious to filmmaker Pierre Coré: “Belle is a Patou, a mountain dog from the Pyrenees, so it seemed wise to us to put her back in her original territory. The Pyrenees are young mountains which live very intensely the issues addressed in the film: the economy linked to tourism, pastoralism (poultry is one of the strengths of the region) and ecology with water pressure and the return large predators. But more than all these rational thoughts, it was the beauty of the landscapes discovered during the scouting that convinced us. There is a quality of light, a variety of decorations, a palette of colors that imprint the film in an exceptional way.”



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