Worn by Louane Emera, Soufiane Guerrab, and the young Léon Durieux, “Visions” mixes polar and fantastic against a background of disappearance and of a child with the faculties of a medium. Where is the countryside that served as the sunny backdrop for the TF1 series?
Who killed Lily? This is the question posed by the heroes of Visions and TF1 viewers following the broadcast last week of the first two episodes of the new front page event series, carried in particular by Louane Emera, Soufiane Guerrab (Lupin), Jean -Hugues Anglade, Marie-Ange Casta, Anne Marivin, and the young Léon Durieux.
Created by Jeanne Le Guillou and Bruno Dega, the duo of screenwriters to whom we owe Gloria, Le Tueur du lac, or Manipulations, Visions tells the story of Diego, eight years old, who, in parallel with the disappearance of a pre-teen from her village, begins to manifest strange visions which soon alert her psychologist and the policeman companion of the latter, in charge of the investigation. What if what Diego sees or draws is related to what happened to Lily?
Composed of six episodes, this series between thriller and fantasy directed by Akim Isker was shot between May 17 and August 13, 2021 in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. And more precisely in Forcalquier, a town located 80km from Aix-en-Provence, and in its surroundings.
Francois Lefebvre / TF1
Once is not custom, it is therefore there where the action takes place that Visions was filmed. A sunny and rural setting which imposed itself on the two screenwriters of the series in 2020, when they were precisely confined to Forcalquier, where they both live.
“We wrote this series during the confinement, in Forcalquier, where the series was shot. So when we wrote we said to ourselves that we were going to register it there”Jeanne Le Guillou recently confided to us during an interview on the backstage of the writing of Visions.
“We went out walking a lot in the countryside and we were extremely inspired by what we saw, by everything around us. And we were incredibly lucky to be able to shoot in Forcalquier, we had a great support from the PACA region”.
Director Akim Isker, to whom we owe the TV movie Nobody’s Child, then magnified the work of Jeanne Le Guillou and Bruno Dega, as the screenwriters themselves admitted, and gave a “western” touch and “universal” to the series.
“We showed photos of the region to Akim and he loved it”added Jeanne Le Guillou. “He came to scout and he was extraordinary because he was able to get out of places that we did not know, or from an unexpected angle, when it is a region that we know very well. I think that the series does not make Provence cliché. There is a very universal side to it, it could happen in lots of different places, even in the United States. There is an almost western side to certain landscapes, quite roots, that we adore”.