Year Zero on M6: we were on the set of the fantastic series with Claire Keim and Emilie Dequenne

What if you could change your past? This is the tagline of Year Zero, the new M6 series carried by Claire Keim, Emilie Dequenne, Marc Riso (I promise you), Marc Ruchmann (Plan heart) and Eric Caravaca, which arrives on Tuesday January 3 on the air .

Created by Maxime Crupaux and Céleste Balin, this drama in four episodes tinged with thrillers and fantasy begins on the evening of December 31, 2023, in a city in the south of France. Marc (Eric Caravaca), star surgeon at the Provence hospital, is found murdered in his workplace. As they leave the crime scene, Anna (Claire Keim), his ex-wife, Cédric (Marc Riso), his best friend, and Lieutenant Juliette Kharoub (Emilie Dequenne) find themselves stuck in the same elevator. Midnight passes…

When the doors open again, Anna, Cédric and Juliette realize that they have been taken back a year, to January 1, 2023. No one but them is aware of this time travel. Bound by this secret, they understand that they have a chance to change everything and perhaps prevent Marc’s murder.

All the fantastic aspect of the series therefore starts from this elevator which, once its doors open after a brief power cut, brings its three passengers back a year. It was part of this crucial scene that we were able to witness when we went to the filming of the series, on July 7, at the Robert-Ballanger hospital in Aulnay-sous-Bois, where this that day about fifty technicians and actors, and about ten extras, including real nurses.

Claire Keim, Emilie Dequenne and Marc Riso in the elevator to go back in time

After two weeks of filming in the South, between Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, and La Ciotat, director Olivier Barma and his actors took over the Paris region, and in particular a disused wing of the Robert-Ballanger hospital center, where Cédric Henry and his decoration team refurbished a floor in order to shoot the sequences taking place in the cardiology department where the character of Eric Caravaca works.

“There is a side shining in this disused hospital, we could really shoot horror films there, it’s super creepy”, launches Claire Keim between two scenes. And it is true that the long journey through the labyrinthine corridors that lead to the renovated part of this hospital has a little something of The Walking Dead, with its walls in dirty condition, its paintings struggling to resist the wear of time and its light fixtures that are missing from the ceiling.

But when we arrive near the elevator that will change everything for the heroes of Year Zero, the magic happens, and we believe we are completely there. If the buttons on the camera do indeed light up, and if the illusion works perfectly in the image, it is in a fake elevator that Claire Keim, Emilie Dequenne and Marc Riso will be filming today. A cabin whose doors are operated by a props man and which allows the director and his teams to film their sequences as they wish.

“We planned two elevators – one here and another at the science faculty of Orsay where we shot the end of the scene, when the three characters come out of the elevator – within which each wall is removed”explains Olivier Barma.

“We can take shots in all directions. We cheat the image with the closed side of the place and we can be in the place of the walls. Apart from the manipulations which consist in removing and refitting the walls, which is sometimes a bit long, it’s more of an advantage. The actors are in this closed universe, quite oppressive, but we have room to work”.

“I’m not sure what state of mind I’m in before shooting this scene”confides to us in the makeup room Emilie Dequenne, who is rare on television and embodies here police lieutenant Juliette Kharoub, whom she describes as “stubborn, sensitive and impulsive”and whose husband presumably died due to a medical error committed by Marc, who is found murdered in the first episode.

“This sequence is capital, yes, and at the same time the characters have not yet left the elevator”continues the actress before leaving to shoot. “They don’t know what awaits them when the doors open. We’re not quite in The Tower of Terror yet (laughs). But I’ve been stuck in an elevator before so I’m going to call on my sensory memory for this sequence”.

One thing is certain: M6 and the production of Year Zero have put the means to make this new fiction a beautiful object, which confirms Paul Schmitt, who produces the series for Merlin Productions (Mediawan): “We really did a lot of decoration work. There were no elevators in the desired places, we created them. And for Marc Riso’s character, Cédric, who lives in a loft under Brooklyn influence, we have found a photo studio in Bagnolet that we have completely fitted out”.

“One more step towards fiction 2.0” according to Claire Keim

After Aiming for the heart and Open-heart investigation, Claire Keim is already back with a new series. She didn’t necessarily want to, by her own admission, but the scenario for Year Zero convinced her.

“I found the screenplay very original, compared to anything I usually read. I wasn’t planning to start a new series, but I read it out of conscience and I I did well (laughs). I was really surprised, it’s daring, it looks like the Anglo-Saxon series that I love”.

“There is a step further than what we are used to seeing in French fiction. I really liked it”continues the interpreter of Anna, a psychologist in the hospital where her cardiologist husband works. “I remember that after watching black-mirror I took such a slap in the face that I asked myself “Why can’t we do that in France?”. And I find that here we are taking a step towards that, one more step towards fiction 2.0. Basically, I kinda wanted to go towards that genre, but I had never really verbalized it to myself”.

From the fantastic, a genre not so often explored in France on television, is born the opportunity for the different characters to repair their mistakes of the past. With references to films like My Unknown, Groundhog Day or It was about time, according to Paul Schmitt, who reveals that the idea was not to sink into too dark a thriller and to also go towards romantic comedy, especially in through the character of Cédric, played by Marc Riso.

PHILIPPE WARRIN/Merlin Production/M6

“When we love each other, it’s worth fighting for”. That’s also what we want to tell with this series”adds Olivier Barma, who directs the four episodes of the series and finds Claire Keim after Harcelés.

“Cédric, for example, has fallen in love with a girl and has to marry her. But when he goes back, this girl no longer knows him. Will he succeed in seducing her again? he has to use the fact that he knows everything about her? At the risk of scaring her? We really ask the question “If we met a second time, in another way, could it work ? Would we still have liked each other if things were different? There are a lot of super interesting things for actors to do.”.

And this element of time travel, which serves both the thriller plot around Marc’s death and the different personal and romantic stories of the main characters, obviously served as a real beautiful playground for the director of Year Zero. .

“It was a huge challenge, because there is a step back, three seasons in the image, we start in January and we end in June. ‘year zero’says Olivier Barma, who seems delighted with these few weeks of filming.

“You have to manage to make it believable in the image, make beautiful transitions to bring flashbacks, take the viewer by the hand so that he understands where we are in time with each sequence. It’s a job very interesting visual and sound to create. We chose a process that makes the foreground of each flashback a particular shot that we edit upside down. Each time he sees this, the viewer will understand that this it’s a flashback”.

But Year Zero is also the series of the meeting between Claire Keim and Emilie Dequenne, who had a strong desire to collaborate. “I dreamed of working with Emilie, I am in total admiration. She is really one of the reasons that made me want to be there. I wanted to see how she works. I love her way of understanding the things. She makes everything seem easy. And she gives me the potato.”says Claire Keim, who is full of praise for her partner, who gives it back to her.

“We were really happy to shoot together with Claire. I was delighted to meet her and to work with her. I knew she would be someone delicious and intelligent, it shows. And this shooting with her, and all our playing partners, it’s pure happiness. Even if the rhythm is very difficult and it’s quite intense, I will have a little twinge in my heart when the shooting is finished, it’s a beautiful adventure”.

Fortunately, the door already seems open to a possible season 2 if successful. And so to a reunion for all this happy team that we can discover on the air next Tuesday on M6.