‘And Their Children After Them’: Directors Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma Treat Teenage Angst with Pop Power

Barely a decade out of film school, Gallic twins Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma are set to make an international splash with their fourth feature, “And Their Children After Them,” premiering at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

Adapted from a literary sensation that won the Prix Goncourt, France’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize, the film explores teenage heartache and working-class struggles with a novelistic sweep. It plays as a coming-of-age power ballad filled with operatic emotions and chart-topping tunes.

“We wanted to turn a story made up of fairly ordinary, small conflicts into something vast and cinematic,” says director Zoran Boukherma. He co-wrote the script with his brother Ludovic after actor-filmmaker Gilles Lellouche handed them a copy of the book over lunch two years ago.

“The idea stemmed from our discussion with Gilles and the original author Nicolas Mathieu, who recognized that a very small event could lead to an entire family’s downfall. The book explores the tragedy of ordinary people and the romance of everyday life, and we needed to do the same on a cinematic scale,” adds Ludovic Boukherma.

Lellouche, who stars in “And Their Children After Them,” initially approached the Boukherma brothers to write a series based on the book. However, he eventually let them turn it into a movie after deciding to focus on his own film, “Beating Hearts,” which competed at this year’s Cannes.

To tackle their biggest project to date, the Boukherma brothers collaborated with French blockbuster producers Hugo Selignac at Chi-Fou-Mi (a Mediawan banner) and Alain Attal and Les Films du Tresor, who also produced Lellouche’s epic love story “Beating Hearts.”

Told over four summers, the story follows Anthony (Paul Kircher, breakout star of “The Animal Kingdom”) as he matures from a gangly dreamer in the summer of 1992 to a self-assured young man on the eve of France’s World Cup victory in 1998.

As expected, his path is filled with yearning and strife, from an almost-unrequited romantic obsession with the affluent Steph (Angelina Woreth, of the recent Director’s Fortnight winner “This Life of Mine”), to a rivalry with Moroccan-born Hacine (Sayyid El Alami) that grows more violent over time.

The filmmakers did not sugarcoat the story’s tough social setting, often tracking how economic precarity can lead to substance abuse or xenophobia in a region still a hotbed for the far right. However, they steered away from the social-realist approach common in politically minded festival films.

“The book is about all of France,” says Ludovic Boukherma. “So the film needed to be equally accessible. We wanted to move away from naturalism and didn’t go for that raw, handheld style. Instead, we went for something more generous, closer to New Hollywood – offering the film to those whom we depict by making it more universal.” This approach aimed to make the film more accessible and enjoyable for everyone, including those depicted in it.

The Boukherma brothers initially gained recognition with horror comedies reminiscent of video-store classics like “An American Werewolf in London” and “Jaws,” transposed to a rural French setting.

“The book spoke to us so much,” says Zoran, who grew up in a small rural town in Southwestern France. “It resonated with our own adolescence that, in the end, we thought by adapting Nicolas Mathieu’s text, we could make our most personal film. The summer boredom, the working-class milieu, the love for an elusive girl – that all could have come from our lives.”

Kircher, a rising star who earned Cesar nominations for his roles in Thomas Cailley’s “Animal Kingdom” and Christophe Honoré’s “Winter Boy,” brought vulnerability to the character of Anthony, described as a “bit of a brawler” in the book.

Kircher, who worked with a choreographer to portray Anthony from ages 14 to 20, exudes “something a bit wobbly” that makes his character “a bit touching,” says Ludovic.

The filmmakers took their greatest liberty with Anthony’s father, Patrick (played by Lellouche), who struggles with alcoholism. While the book cast the father as more of a racist brute, Lellouche played up the character’s world-weariness instead.

“We thought he might be violent, but mostly towards himself,” Zoran explains. “He’s a gentler character. His alcoholism tells us he’s a broken person, not someone who hurts others. Maybe, unconsciously, we put a bit of our parents into these characters too.”

The classic-rock soundtrack also underscores the story’s universal appeal. While needle drops from Aerosmith, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Bruce Springsteen might cost a pretty penny, the filmmakers say they had “carte-blanche” when assembling the most period-appropriate soundtrack.

That is, with one notable exception.

“We could not get ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’” says Ludovic. “Nirvana doesn’t sell their rights, so it’s really impossible to get that song. I think the most recent Batman got one, but they paid $5 million!”

The filmmakers still made the most of their mixtape, choreographing entire sequences to classic rock playing live on set and pushing the actors to perform in tune, such as during a pool scene with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge” playing in the background.

“Doing so created an emotion that simply wouldn’t have been there without the music,” says Zoran. “It created something real.”

Source: Variety