“Our way of filming is first and foremost our feelings,” proclaim Hamé and Ekoué, directors of “Rue des Dames”

The two members of the rap group La Rumeur return to cinema and directing with the pretty urban chronicle “Rue des dames” in which they once again film their shady Paris, often nocturnal and resourceful. Interview.

The meeting takes place, as often with them, in their offices on rue Caulaincourt, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, Mohamed “Hamé” Bourokba and Ekoué Labitey (without forgetting the third friend of La Rumeur, Philippe, posed not far away in the room) are almost inexhaustible on this film which resembles them, and which was quite complicated to put together and finance in the wake of Covid-19.

Seven years after it was noticed The last Parisiansthis story of Mia (excellent Garance Marillier), a young broke, pregnant and resourceful manicurist, around whom several colorful characters revolve, seduces again.

Franceinfo: There are several ways to film Paris: you can make a postcard, for example. But you like to film the city and your neighborhoods like no other and in a way that we rarely see…

Hamé: Yes, after filming the Pigalle district in our first film, we shift a little, and the landscape of our film represents in a way the interior landscape of our character. And our relationship with Paris is like attachment to a person in a relationship, there are good sides and the pleasure that we can get from it, and like in any relationship it can hurt us, annoy us, disappoint us. Our relationship with this neighborhood which has seen us create music and cinema for over twenty years is like that.

And we almost end up preferring the atmospheres you create than the story itself sometimes…

Ekoué : Yes because it is precisely part of the story, it is our way of telling ourselves, it is our gesture. This is our definition of storytelling.

Hamé: Our way of filming is first of all a way of feeling, we want to believe it, we want it to “feel” true. Us, through our looks and our sensitivity. That’s the first sting. We don’t ask ourselves the question of how our way of filming coexists with the way of doing things of others, we don’t make a history of cinema while we tell our stories.

Sometimes you open doors in the narrative without entering them, which is a way of confusing things. As if you didn’t want to weigh down the story with too much explanation?

Ekoué: Yes, that’s exactly it, as we said previously, above all we want to create an atmosphere. It’s a bias and also somewhere a technique in itself. We draw on this strength, which comes to us from rap, this precarious side with just a pen on a stage to create something very “atmospheric”. We wanted it to be in our cinema and for it to be the starting point of everything.

What is also striking is that in this effort, there is a lot of money given hand in hand, literally. And in general, all the human relationships that you show take place outside of any state or institutional circuit: no banks, no social services and a little bit of the health system.?

Hamé: Yes and it’s the story of people who don’t have the codes of money, as soon as they touched it and thought they were smart and pushed the right door, one mistake leads to another, and creates more serious consequences. Ladies Street it is also a successive shift of little people, little freeloaders who do not have these codes and do what they can. To survive, ultimately. And on the question of money, we really like to film wads of slightly fat bills, which pass from hand to hand, it’s very photogenic and beautiful to film. This is money that we don’t hoard, not bourgeois money, handyman’s money.

You usually work with actors who are part of your entourage, like Slimane Dazi. How was Garance Marillier able to integrate so well into this universe?

Ekoué: Cinema is an encounter, and how you manage to create an artistic relationship between your microcosm, and people who don’t necessarily have the same codes, and who come from a slightly more “classic” cinema. The real feat is to make them compatible with this ecosystem, to the point that when we finish the film we think that these characters could be encountered at the local grocery store. The real preparation with Garance began well in advance of filming, pointing out this requirement to acclimatize it with our nebula, for a result that we really liked.

Ladies Streetdirected by Hamé and Ekoué, in theaters.