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NAMUR 2024

Antoine Besse • Director of Ollie

“Films that don’t position themselves clearly between arthouse and mainstream cinema don’t receive enough support, and that’s a real problem”

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- The French director tells us more about his skateboarding-themed feature debut, which was inspired by the tragic story of his friend

Antoine Besse • Director of Ollie
(© FIFF/Juliette Vanespen)

French filmmaker Antoine Besse talks about his debut feature, Ollie [+see also:
film review
interview: Antoine Besse
film profile
]
, which world-premiered at the Angoulême French-language Film Festival and has just had its international premiere at the Namur International French-language Film Festival.

Cineuropa: This is your first feature, and there was a ten-year gap between your short film Le Skate moderne and Ollie. Why did it take so long?
Antoine Besse:
When I made the short film, I was only 23. I aspired to be a filmmaker, but I was still very much trying to find myself. When the short film generated a buzz on the internet, it opened the door to a career in advertising. I preferred to earn my living in advertising, so that I could travel in a van, meet people and get intercultural experience. After that, I worked on several series. It was an opportunity to get some training.

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A few years ago, the legendary skater in the group portrayed in Le Skate moderne, Béranger, died after a life of excess. And that's when I thought to myself, “There's a story to tell here.” We never talk about skateboarders in the countryside, these people who are easily forgotten... I wanted to talk about them. That was my film, right there.

What difficulties did you encounter in making this feature?
I developed the script in a very short time with producer and writer Aurélien Molas. He helped me a great deal thanks to his training as a scriptwriter. The financing was put together very quickly. But the real problems came later. Ollie is neither a radical arthouse film nor mainstream cinema. Although it touches everyone, this type of movie doesn't get much attention. Our first distributor left the project. Others rejected the film because it didn't position itself clearly. This attitude is a real problem. I'm grateful that we've finally found a distributor willing to fight for films like ours.

The movie was inspired by the tragic story of your friend Béranger. How did you decide which autobiographical elements to include and which ones to leave out?
When my family moved to the Dordogne region, I became a victim of bullying at school, like Pierre. The situation with my father was also complicated. Skateboarding helped me. In the film, I created distance by changing my father's profession. And as for the character of Bertrand, who is inspired by Béranger, we worked on him with actor Théo Christine as a somewhat mythical protagonist. One example is the scene where he suddenly disappears – a bit like a magician. That allowed me to eliminate a bit of the morbid side. I shifted things around so that it didn't affect me too much. All the same, we shot in the same surroundings that I grew up in, and which we also used for Le Skate moderne.

For Kristen Billon, who played Pierre, this was one of his first experiences as an actor. How did you work with him so that he could be so truthful in his acting, especially in the violent bullying scenes, but at the same time not let it affect him outside the shoot?
Right from the start, there was a strong connection between Kristen, Théo and me. Kristen is an intelligent kid; he's got this musicality in his performance. Théo helped him a lot, as he's a professional actor. The two of them managed to form a wonderful bond. As soon as I said, “Cut,” they had a great time together, which meant Kristen wasn't too overwhelmed. He really knew how to keep things separate, even in the bullying scenes.

Did growing up in the countryside help or hinder your entry into the film world?
It was thanks to the films of Spike Jonze that I discovered arthouse cinema in its broadest sense. I wanted to do that, too, except that when you live in the most backwater of all places, you have to go to the nearest town to study. For me, that was Bordeaux. There's not much to learn at film school, but I did find some comrades in arms. In my class were Jonathan Vinel [Eat the Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Caroline Poggi and Jonathan…
film profile
]
] and Lola Quivoron [Rodéo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lola Quivoron and Julie Ledru
film profile
]
], who both went on to study at La Fémis.

I wanted to learn on my own, and I realised that if you come from the countryside, you're not welcome. Cinema is a fairly closed environment. I was labelled a “country boy”. And that's part of the reason why I made Le Skate moderne – it was a bit like a cry of fury. The film world didn't want us, so I put the film on the internet and it really took off.

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(Translated from French)

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