In cinemas from April 3, Sean Penn makes his comeback in a punchy drama where he shares the bill with Tye Sheridan. Everything you need to know about Black Flies, the new slapshot produced by Frenchman Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.
What is it about ?
Ollie Cross, a young paramedic from New York, teams up with Gene Rutkovsky, an experienced emergency room doctor. Confronted with the violent reality of their daily lives, he discovers the risks of a job which every day shakes his certainties and leaves him no respite.
The new slap from Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
Adapted from 911 by Shannon Burke, first published in 2008, Black Flies is the new punchy film from Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire. If his name doesn’t mean anything to you, the French director has nevertheless proven himself in the genre of dramatic thriller, since he notably owes A Prayer Before Dawn which recounted the true story of the young English boxer Billy Moore imprisoned in Thailand for drug possession.
This time, it is on this dark novel that the filmmaker has set his sights, thus bringing to the screen the journey of a young ambulance driver in Harlem plagued by the crack epidemic of the 1990s. And to camp his hero, Sauvaire relied on Tye Sheridan, revealed in Ready Player One and The Tree of Life, and who here gives the answer to an ever more impressive Sean Penn in the guise of his teammate Gene Rutkovsky.
Residing in New York, the native of Paris, passionate about the Big Apple, was able, once again, to depict the city from all its angles. “While reading it I said to myself that it was a wonderful prism through which to explore New York. Travel its arteries. shoot a film there, he says. JI didn’t see myself making a film set 30 years earlier but on the contrary capturing the world and the reality of our time. That of the post-pandemic. During which the paramedics played a vital role. New York as the front line.”
Selected in official competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and therefore screened for the first time last May, the feature film immediately won over its first spectators. “It deserved the Palme D’or, and I strongly advise you to go see it when it comes out”, writes for example an Internet user on AlloCiné, when another applauds a film “ultra visceral and hard-boiled, while being well documented for greater realism“, and or “Sauvaire still shows his talents as a director”.
In short, one of the cinema slaps that it would be a shame to miss, to see from April 3.