2023-06-20 11:16:29
For his first feature film, the amazing Omar la fraise, Elias Belkeddar, 35, was immediately convincing. Meeting with a gifted.
We are in the 9th, not very far from the Gare du Nord, in the premises of Iconoclast, the production company behind Omar la fraise, the big sensation of Cannes. The story of two Laurel and Hardy criminals – extraordinary Reda Kateb and Benoît Magimel – who, after having reigned over the middle of French banditry, have to live small schemes in Algiers. Slumped in a sofa, Elias Belkeddar, 35, orange hoodie, in socks, tries to relax…
Your first film caused a sensation at Cannes. What is your background ?
Elias Belkeddar: I grew up in Aubervilliers, then Place des Fêtes in the 19th arrondissement, in Paris. My father, a social worker, is an Algerian immigrant, my mother, a librarian, is Russian. They were passionate about culture – my mother, books, my father, cinema – and they transmitted this love to me and my two older brothers. Every Sunday, we went to the Champo, to the Reflet Médicis, to see a western or something. I also read a lot of Russian literature…
And the cinema?
Very young, after the baccalaureate, I started doing management, coffee or production assistantship. I worked on short films, commercials, shootings, making of… I took everything. Until I became a young producer of music videos, commercials, institutional films… And I arrived at Iconoclast, launched by my brother Mourad. I loved collaborating with him, then I developed films as a producer and I also co-write. I worked on My Days of Glory by Antoine de Bary, Athena by Romain Gavras, the Désordres series by Florence Foresti… We produce two feature films a year. In 2017, I wanted to develop a short film in Algeria but no one wanted to direct it, the story of a gangster who organizes a fake marriage in order to transport drugs with city lascars. Mourad finally suggests that I stage it and I go for it. I shoot at Christmas, with a friend, and we do it in four days with a camera and few means. Miracle, the film is selected at Cannes. Thomas Bidegain sees it, offers me his services for a long. We were supposed to shoot in 2020, but because of the Covid, Algeria closed its border for two years. During these two years, I was able to refine my film, it made me gain enormously in quality, and I worked at the same time on the projects of Iconoclast.
Specialist in organized crime, journalist Jérôme Pierrat collaborated on the screenplay.
Jérôme is a friend, and we share a tropism for banditry. I told him about the project seven years ago and Jérôme, very curious, came with me to Algeria. We went back and forth for two years, meeting people, taking notes, we started thinking about the project together. Very generous, Thomas arrived later, he helped me with the structure and he did a lot of creative work on the characters.
Are Benoît Magimel and Reda Kateb inspired by real boss characters?
They are composites of imaginations, cinematographic references and characters that I met in Algeria, but also in Paris or in a bar in Marseille. Then Reda and Benoît did some composition work on the characterization, the attitude. They are really the ones who gave birth to the characters.
How do you manage to have big stars like Magimel and Kateb for your first feature?
They are two actors that I adore deeply and that I had never seen together. I offered them the film and both accepted within 24 hours. Benoît even accepted without reading. I told him about the pitch, talked about Algeria, we joked around for 15 minutes and he said to me, “Go ahead, I like you, I’ll do it!” “I found it classy. As for Reda, he read it the same day, he arranged to meet me in a café in Bastille and he asked me to set dates. I really wanted an Algerian actor for Omar. Between the two of them, there was a bit of improvisation, but not that much. In three takes, it was folded, but often the first take was the good one. Frequently, in the morning, Benoît arrived with new ideas. I wrote the dialogues and he learned them.
How do you explain the chemistry between them?
It’s simple. They didn’t know each other, they met once in Paris, made three jokes and it was settled. There was never a discussion about one character or another. It was organic, natural. There was no ego, no competition. They are very popular with Algerians, they are really popular. The shooting was very intense, it was 40°, but I hope they had fun.
The influence of the film?
I wanted a mix between Kitano and Italian neo-realism, I wanted to see what would happen if we mixed Horrible, Dirty and Wicked with Outrages. The actors may have brought a more Scorsesian dimension. But the gangster in total loser, it comes directly from Kitano. And the discourse on social misery is rather The Bicycle Thief. But the prime mover of the film is my wonder at Algeria. Graphically, architecturally, it is a country of hallucinating beauty. Since my childhood, this country has fascinated me, I go there three times a year.
With the selection at Cannes, did you already have the melon?
(He laughs) Cannes is a little narcissistic trip, but I really want the film to be seen by the general public. So here I go.
Omar the Strawberry, in theaters
Par Marc Godin
Photo Arnaud Juhérian
1687703803
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