Interview with Ricardo Trogi | In 1995

Ricardo Trogi had already told me this story. It was February 1995 and Ricardo, 24, was getting ready to return home to Quebec after six months of a crazy race. I had been tasked by The Press to interview the eight candidates of The Race destination worlda legendary Radio-Canada show, broadcast between 1988 and 1999.

I already knew, thanks to his tragicomic films, the informed cinephile with a keen sense of setting (“He is without a doubt the most “cinematic” of the competitors”, I wrote about him). I discovered a born storyteller, a verbomotor with colorful language.

Trogi told me that he had taken a plane to the wrong destination (to Cyprus instead of Turkey) and taken an 18-hour bus ride in Vietnam to travel 300 km in the company of chickens and fish. He also criticized a film by an Egyptian filmmaker on a flight to Tunisia, without realizing that he was the person he was talking to.

He had also become bogged down in Cairo in an administrative nightmare worthy of the house that drives people mad. Twelve Tasks of Asterixwhich became the heart of the plot of 1995out July 31. “Is it already long in the film? It was already twice as long in the script! There are steps missing because I couldn’t spend the whole film on it,” the author-filmmaker explains to me.

After the irresistible nineteen eighty one, 1987 And 1991the Doinel de Trogi cycle, with the excellent Jean-Carl Boucher as the alter ego of the future filmmaker, is not necessarily complete. Even if 1995 has the air of the end clap of what is for the moment a tetralogy.

“I put the chance at 75 percent that it’s over,” Trogi said. “At first I thought there would just be a movie, but I wanted to tell the story of car radio thefts in 1987. And as I was telling my trip to Italy in 1991I thought I couldn’t make a film around The Race. But I thought I could tell the story of how I had trouble making a film. It could also be that, The Race. I look forward to seeing, among the former competitors, those who will recognize themselves in this.”

Read “The Phenomenon The Race »

There are likely to be several of them, starting with François Parenteau, a former competitor and member of the Zapartists, whom Trogi had joined on New Year’s Day in Nepal, where some of the images of 1995 were filmed. In the 1994-1995 vintage, there was also the documentary filmmaker Hugo Latulippe (who directed What’s left of us with another competitor, François Prévost) as well as Radio-Canada journalist Étienne Leblanc.

Seeing 1995I myself felt like I was being thrown back into the time when I was joining the “runners” all over the world, when communications were as complicated as they were expensive. I was 22 years old and living The Race by proxy. I felt like I was reliving it a little through the most recent tribulations of Ricardo’s character.

Those who followed at the time The Race – some 400,000 viewers, late Sunday afternoon – will find references in the film that will make them smile, notably the warm accent of the host Pierre Therrien, reproduced by Mickaël Gouin.

“This is not a film about The Race. The Race “is in the film,” Trogi defends himself, who sees the famous show more as a backdrop. If, for me, 1995 is a step aside in Trogi’s autobiographical series, for him the film is above all a continuation.

“I had the same approach as with the other films, except that I put a little less comic artifice. I’ve aged. It ends up having an impact on the writing. What happens is more determining than in the other films. It’s more concrete in relation to who I am now.”

The effect The Race

The Race allowed Ricardo Trogi to become the artist he became. “I put it at the beginning of the film: I was selling books secretly at university. I had done a bit of everything, I had sold cell phones. I didn’t know where I was going. It’s lucky that there was this call because I don’t know what I would be doing today.”

Coming back from abroad, he had found his calling. “The day I came back, I told myself that I would never do anything else with my life,” says the director, who is currently filming the second season of the series. Lakay Nou.

He did a few food contracts, made short films, worked for a year at MusiquePlus, then, thanks to the success of his first feature film, Quebec-Montrealhe was able to devote himself to fiction, cinema and television. “I was just happy to do something other than a job as the son of an immigrant. I had a privilege to be in this environment and I intended to take advantage of it.”

His dream came true: to bring his own scripts to the screen.

And since I write in Quebec French, this is where I filmed. I’m satisfied. I don’t miss anything. I didn’t dream of doing this in the United States.

Ricardo Trogi

Denis Villeneuve (winner of The Europe-Asia Race in 1991) had told the eight competitors, while they were having a beer before their departure at the now defunct De Londres à Berlin pub on rue Saint-Denis: “Be free!” Ricardo Trogi now realizes how precious this freedom was during The RaceHe was alone abroad, without subject constraints, but pressed for time: he visited 15 countries in six months.

We see Ricardo in 1995meticulously preparing detailed editing plans that he mailed along with his VHS tapes. “When I went to do The RaceI was going to make films, not a trip. I was 70 km from the Great Wall of China, but I didn’t have time to go. I still regret it!” At the time, he told me about the loneliness he suffered. “I tend to lock myself in hotel rooms to do editing,” he told me. “I’m completely obsessed with my films, probably too much so.”

Philippe Falardeau, winner of the 1992-1993 edition, has already said of The Race that it was like an audiovisual military service, recalls Trogi. “You go there voluntarily, but it’s tough ! I find it strange that when we returned, we were not all systematically hired. We were willing and able to deliver. I sometimes meet former participants, and we are like elders of a cult. We won’t talk about it, but we know what we are talking about!

The Racesays Ricardo Trogi, was a unique opportunity that changed his worldview and made him a more open-minded person. “When things are not going well, I think about what I have seen elsewhere in the world, and that inevitably puts things into perspective. When I hear about cities like Ankara or Beijing on the news, I know what images there are outside the frame. I know what a morning looks like in Cairo. These are images that remain.”

In theaters July 31