“I got rid of this illusion that cinema might change the world a long time ago”, notes Swann Arlaud, a piece of sandwich in one pocket, a water bottle in the other. Proof ? « little peasant [César du meilleur acteur en 2018] showed the situation of farmers at a time when we see a lot of suicides. Milk prices which must be aligned with Europe. So, people working at a loss. At the Ministry of Agriculture, they saw the film, they thought it was great. There are no fewer farmers who commit suicide. »
Swann Arlaud was born in 1981, with the left in power, and a first name to make his French teachers swoon, but his high school friends gobble up. He inherited both: the left anchored in the heart, and Proust’s melancholy in the face of a wavering world. Looking at his filmography, we say that most of his roles are in this yardstick. Men in resistance or resilience in “committed” films. Rather tell him “in search of meaning”. quote Thanks to Godby François Ozon, on the abuses of priests in the Church (César for best actor in a supporting role in 2020), Exfiltratedby Emmanuel Hamon, on jihadism, As long as the sun is beatingby Philippe Petit, released in February… We therefore find it in L’Etabliplaying Robert Linhart, one of the founders of the Maoist movement in France, professor of philosophy “to settle” to the factory to guide the masses there towards the big night, and who will come back with an inextinguishable depression and a best-selling book.
“The committed actor thing, I don’t quite agreedefends Swann Arlaud. For me, commitment happens in the street. If I sometimes find myself making films with a political or social dimension, it’s because these are subjects that touch me and that resonate. But I don’t consider myself an actor in the service of an ideology. With hindsight, if, indeed, we can establish a link between roles, it is in fact always a little in spite of myself, it is unconscious. »
Rap and rebel adolescence
He is jovial, without secretiveness, anxious to speak the truth. He does not hide that between him and the director, Mathias Gokalp, it was not a honeymoon. We try to make the synthesis between the nice and slender young man in front of us and the character traits read here and there: ” flayed “, « impulsive », “In front of the camera, he looks charming and, the next, disturbing”. He bursts out laughing: ” Who said that ? » For once, we imagine him, at 16, at high school in Rambouillet – his mother, the director and casting director Tatiana Vialle, and his stepfather, the famous cinematographer and director Bruno Nuytten (Camille Claudel), fled Paris for this local bourgeois countryside. In class, the kid plays around with Grégoire Ludig (from the Palmashow) before going to spread rebellious adolescent rap rhymes.
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