Available on Prime Video, “Coeurs Noirs” follows the daily life of a French army Special Forces commando deployed in Iraq, on the eve of the battle of Mosul. But where was the series, worn by Nicolas Duvauchelle, shot?
This is the event French series of this beginning of the year 2023: Coeurs Noirs, carried by Nicolas Duvauchelle, Marie Dompnier (The Witnesses), Tewfik Jallab (Engrenages), Nina Meurisse (Mixed), Jérémy Nadeau and Thierry Godard, is available since this Friday, February 3 on Prime Video.
Directed by Ziad Doueiri (Baron Noir) and created by Duong Dang-Thai and Corinne Garfin, who were screenwriters on The Office of Legends, this new original creation from Amazon Prime Video takes us to Iraq, in October 2016, on the eve of of the Battle of Mosul.
During six 52-minute episodes, we follow the daily lives of Martin, Adèle, Thomas, Sabrina, Paco and Matteo, who are part of a French army Special Forces commando deployed in Iraq. When the series begins, these men and women have the mission to find and exfiltrate the daughter and grandson of an important French Emir of Daesh whom they have captured and who will only cooperate with them on this condition. .
At the same time documented, spectacular and breathtaking, Coeurs Noirs is a real success that has nothing to envy to American productions and which owes a lot to its atmosphere and its natural settings, which fully contribute to the immersion desired by the scriptwriters and director.
Obviously, this first season was not shot in Iraq, since it was in Morocco that the Prime Video and Mandarin Television teams set up their cameras for several months, from October 2021 to April 2022.
“We shot in certain districts of Casablanca”explained to us the director Ziad Doueiri, who imaged the six episodes of Black Hearts. “But also in the desert, around Marrakech. And in the Beni Mellal region. Because there were places there that looked a bit like Iraq”.
Sife.ElAmine – Mandarin Television
“The shooting lasted about 85 days in all, which is huge”told us Ziad Doueiri during an interview to be found very soon on AlloCiné. “We had planned the shooting dates so that it fell during the periods when the light was the most beautiful, because we wanted that warm burst of light that we can find in Morocco”.
“We suffered a bit from the Covid, the filming stopped for about a month because Morocco had its borders closed. But apart from that, the filming went very well. The army gave us everything we needed”.
And as the director of Coeurs Noirs, who previously worked on Baron Noir and the Arte Dérapages series with Eric Cantona, explained to us, if the choice of location for the filming fell so obviously on Morocco, it’s also because the country has a real tradition of cinema.
“Moroccans are used to filming and big productions, they have a tradition of cinema. Americans have been filming in Morocco for a very long time, for example. So we found the landscapes and sets we needed there, but also the manpower necessary for such filming”.
The entire first season of Coeurs Noirs is available now on Prime Video.