It’s a day of filming that Olivier Marchal won’t soon forget. The director is at the head ofa new mafia series titled Pax Massilia. It will be available on Netflix from December 6, 2023. For the filming of this fiction, the teams went to Marseille. A city that the American platform is particularly fond of since several available series and films take place there. In the columns of 20 minutes, Friday December 1, 2023, Olivier Marchal provided details. He notably mentioned a scene of which he has very bad memories. This is’a shooting that took place in a cemetery. Once arrived on site, production realized thata family buried a young… victim of traffickers’ bullets. “An unacceptable misstep” according to the director. Indeed, he specifies: “It didn’t go very well obviously. We apologized to the family“. Olivier Marchal then declares that this situation was very complicated for the family. “When you have a ceremony and you hear guys playing Peter Pan…,” he lamented, adding that the person behind this error was punished.
Olivier Marchal: a director very attached to the city of Marseille
For this new series, Olivier Marchal had no other choice in mind than Marseille. The city fascinates the director, but not only that. “Marseille is very popular abroad in terms of decor but also with its particular atmosphere“he confided to France 3, Wednesday November 29, 2023, then adding: “This city is powerful, at the same time majestic, with its light, its natural settings, and at the same time this kind of animality which emerges from the popular neighborhoods, the northern districts, the streets of Marseille, the atmospheres, the bars” . In this fiction, Olivier Marchal ensures that producing scenes of violence was necessary for the story but also for the viewers. “We can’t make police officers without doing scenes of violence and action scenes, otherwise the public would be disappointed”, says the director. Regarding the synopsis of this new series, it is the story of a robber who everyone thought was dead and who returns to Marseille with only one goal. “He wants to take back his place, control the neighborhoods and he will oppose the big drug boss in the city”indicates the former companion of Catherine Marchal.