Four years after setting the Croisette alight with his first feature film “Les Misérables”, Ladj Ly is back with a new gripping and very personal portrait of life in the working-class neighborhoods of the Parisian suburbs.
Building 5, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, tackles the growing housing crisis against a backdrop of racial tensions, poverty, prejudice and police misconduct. For the 45-year-old director, who was inspired by his own childhood in the cities of Clichy-Montfermeil, the reality of the suburbs “hasn’t really evolved” since his first film.
“The suburbs are where I grew up, it’s an area that is close to my heart”confides Ladj Ly during an interview with AFP on Saturday. “There are different issues – dislocation, gentrification”he explains, emphasizing that “many residents were evicted to be housed in even more dilapidated or far away neighborhoods.” “It’s a problem that affects a lot of people, in France or elsewhere abroad, in big cities, in the United States, in Brazil or elsewhere”he adds.
“A pretty exceptional experience”
In Building 5, the storyline revolves around Haby (Anta Diaw), a young activist for housing rights who lives in a suburb whose mayor dies suddenly, leading to the appointment of the idealistic young doctor Pierre (Alexis Manenti) to replace him. While Pierre continues his predecessor’s urban redevelopment plans, Haby and other residents of his dilapidated building attempt to resist evictions.
Tensions rise when a tragic fire in an underground restaurant prompts the new mayor to empty the building. Haby then enters politics, while his friend Blaz, desperate and furious, decides to take matters into his own hands, with dramatic consequences.
For Anta Diaw, this shoot was “a pretty exceptional experience”although some of the harshest scenes, such as the painful lowering of a loved one’s coffin down a narrow stairwell, could have been particularly harrowing. “When I was called to the set and I discovered this coffin, there, in the middle of the room, it’s true, it wasn’t easy. I didn’t think it would reach me at this point. point there”reveals the young actress. “It took me five minutes to refocus.”
A “fairly personal” story
Ladj Ly’s career quickly took off thanks to his first work Wretched, presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019 and which won the jury prize. In total, the film won four Césars, including best film, as well as an Oscar nomination. Alexis Manenti, for his part, received the César for Most Promising Male in 2020.
In this new opus, his character, Pierre, a white man in a neighborhood mainly inhabited by people of color, is forced to navigate the twists and turns of explosive local politics, while trying to preserve his job as a doctor and his family life. .
“He’s someone who wants to make things happen and he does it in a somewhat radical way,” notes the actor when talking about his role. “He thinks he is right and above all he thinks that the end justifies the means”, he says. But when he evacuates the building following the fire at the illegal restaurant, leaving residents with only a few minutes to prepare their belongings for an uncertain future, nothing goes right.
Inspired by real events, the film aims to talk about “housing problem” in a world where today no one has “real political ambitions to move the lines”, underlines Ladj Ly.
The French director, whose parents are from Mali, still keeps in mind the idea of making a third part, which he “will do much later.” “It turns out that the tower, building 5, is the tower I grew up in”he confides, adding that “It was from this tower that I was evicted to be rehoused, so it’s a story that is quite personal to me.”