26/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Get ready for summer camp – and a bit of soul-searching – in the directors’ light summer film that’s not entirely without darkness

(© 2025 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it)

Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret, the directors of The Worst Ones [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Romane Gueret and Lise Akoka
film profile], return to Cannes with Summer Beats [+see also:
interview: Lise Akoka, Romane Gueret
film profile], a light summer film that’s not entirely without darkness. Based on their web series Tu préfères?, it heads to a summer camp, where confused kids – and their equally lost supervisors – can figure out who they are. The movie has been shown as a Cannes Première screening.

Cineuropa: Summer camp is all about escape – even more so for these kids, often coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Why did it speak to you, as a setting?
Lise Akoka: We wanted to film even younger kids than the ones we’d worked with in our previous films, which were more for teenagers. We wanted to make a film about childhood. These two girls, our leads [Shirel Nataf and Fanta Kebe], are suddenly facing children who mirror a bit who they used to be when they were little.

The idea was to capture the taste of summer camps in a realistic way because you spend a lot of time there as a kid. So did we. I was a supervisor there, too. The kids in the film come from Parisian neighbourhoods, and it was a way for us to shift that typical gaze. There are all of these stereotypes surrounding banlieue films, urban stories always filmed in between four tower blocks. It made sense to take them someplace else, to a sunny setting.

The sun, the colours – they just hit you here. Can we talk about the concept of a summer film?
Romane Gueret: There are several things that come to mind because when you make films with so many children, over such a long period of time, it just needs to take place during the school holidays. But even without that practical aspect in mind, it was a lot of fun. It’s a social comedy: a happy film, hopefully. We wanted it to be carried by children and to be very, very playful. We wanted sun and colours – we even wanted a river. We’ve always shot in the summer, actually. I think we just like making summer films!

It's surprisingly funny – these kids are funny. It’s great when they stumble upon a nudist beach and state: “The French are just too laid back.”
LA: We wrote a lot also thanks to these kids. We had all these periods of immersion with them in recreation centres; we did workshops in Montreuil. Spending all this time together allowed us to create their characters, breathe life into the dialogues, and figure out their physical characteristics and personal stories. All this back and forth between real-life interactions and writing with Catherine Paille, our co-writer, gave birth to this script.

After it was done, we started casting – it went on for one year. We’d seen thousands of kids before we found our perfect team. It’s fiction – we needed children with actual acting skills. They all have a very flamboyant nature. That’s really our signature way of working. It’s all about immersive writing and a very long casting process, and then we direct via earpieces. All of the kids had them, and we’d give them little clues to find the rhythm of the scenes.

Almost everyone gets their own moment here. You really remember who they are.
RG: We wanted to make an ensemble film, and at the same time, we wanted each character to have a clear trajectory. It took us a long time to strike that balance in the writing, but often, the biggest writing challenges are solved in the editing. We needed to make sure you would recognise them quickly – we also thought about it during the shoot. Editing was another long process, but I think we succeeded.

Do you want to continue working together? It’s always fascinating when people decide to co-direct. Sometimes, we think of that job as very ego-driven.
RG: It all started with a short film. Back then, we didn’t even know each other that well. It was 11 years ago. We kind of embarked on this whole adventure together, creating projects and eventually creating a method that now works better and better. There’s no ego here, and it all feels very complementary. It’s our strength, actually.

LA: At this point, we don’t understand how people can make films alone [laughs]. How can you be by yourself, without anyone else sharing your stress level and understanding your problems? We became friends by working together. I think it’s much better than the other way around, when friends decide to work together.

You mentioned banlieue films and certain stories that people expect from there. Is it necessary to show them that there’s more to it?
LA: When you’re constantly feeding people the same stereotypes and showing young people from these neighbourhoods in the same way, it’s harmful – also politically speaking. It creates a divide in a society that should be coming together. When we embark on our projects, we want to show the beauty of these children, show they are full of grace, of poetry, fun, intelligence. That’s what interests us, and that’s what we want to convey: that admiration and love for them. It doesn’t prevent us from dealing with certain problematic issues, but that’s not the heart of the film.