“Les Amandiers”, a tribute to Patrice Chéreau by Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi

For ten days, the Cannes Croisette (Alpes-Maritimes) is the scene of all excesses. But Sunday, May 22, it is the real theater which is in the spotlight with a team of young actors who have come to defend The Almond Trees, from the name of this alternative school in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) which, at the end of the 1980s, revolutionized the theater scene. The director of the film, Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi, was a pupil of the founder, Patrice Chéreau. “It was as if we were arriving on Olympus”, she remembers.

A fervor transmitted to the young actress who plays her role. “She has such an overwhelming and powerful way of bringing the past to the present, bringing those things to life. It felt like there were souls with us,” says Nadia Tereszkiewicz. The ghosts of the heroes of the Almond Trees, mown down in full youth by AIDS or heroin. They wanted to live intensely, whatever the cost. Like the character of Étienne, played by Sofiane Bennacer. And it is Louis Garrel who will have the heavy task of slipping into the costume of Patrice Chéreau, to whom the Festival pays a powerful tribute through this film.