Mahmoud Kebe and Doğukan Kur on the roof of a residential high-rise: "I don't get funny looks here in Clichy like I do in Paris."
Movies in Misery
An Escape from the Squalor of the Paris Banlieues
In Clichy-sous-Bois, a poverty-ridden suburb of Paris,
residents are making movies about their lives. Supported by superstar filmmaker
Ladj Ly, it could offer some a way out.
By Britta
Sandberg
19.08.2020,
14.44 Uhr
One of the
first rules you learn in Clichy-sous-Bois sounds absurd, but once you hear it,
you'll never forget it. The rule is: Never stand too close to the side of a
building, because something might fall from above. Parts of the façade, for
example, that can't be stopped by the nets that have been provisionally
installed on the sides of the housing projects.
"But
sometimes, televisions, refrigerators or flowerpots come raining down,"
says Mahmadou Kebe with a grin.
Kebe, 22,
and his friend Doğukan Kur, 20, are standing at the edge of a parking lot in
front of one of these beige-brown high-rises that make up their neighborhood of
Cité Le Chêne-Pointu situated in Clichy-sous Bois. It is one of those places in
the French Republic where the sacred principle of "égalité,"
equality, was invalidated decades ago.
In the
lobbies of the buildings, plaster crumbles down from the soot-black ceilings.
There are puddles of water on the floor and rusty mailboxes hang loosely from
the wall. It stinks of garbage. On the ground floor, someone has sprayed a
message on the wall: "Attention: The parents who live in this staircase
have not raised their children well."
Mahmadou
Kebe and Doğukan Kur have lived here for as long as they can remember. Kebe
came to France from Mali with his family as a small child while Tur, whose
parents are from Turkey, was born here. Both are intimately familiar with all
of the rules and codes of Clichy-sous-Bois. They know how to get on the roofs
of the high-rises, the only place where they can escape the closeness of their
apartments, referred to here as F2, F3 or F4, depending on the number of rooms
they have. They know in which buildings the elevator still works and where it
does not. They know that you shouldn't stare too long if a drug deal is going
down in the parking lot.
There is
one thing they haven't learned, however: How to get out of this desolation.
Because as run down as Clichy-sous-Bois might be, it is still their home.
"I
like this place. I don't want to leave," says Kebe. "I don't get
funny looks here in Clichy like I do in Paris. People stick together here
because everyone is stuck in the same shit."
Kebe and
Tur are both wearing the banlieue uniform: baseball cap, trainers and
sweatpants from Puma or Nike. Kebe also carries around a fake Louis Vuitton bag
and has a thick silver chain around his neck. When he smiles, a silver incisor
sparkles in his mouth.
The World
of the Forgotten
With the
support of the prize-winning director Ladj Ly, Kebe and Tur are currently
making a film about life in the banlieue, a portrait of the world of the
forgotten. During the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, more people died in
Département 93, to which Clichy-sous-Bois belongs, than in any other part of
France. The death rate has risen by almost 120 percent relative to last year,
and at its peak, in the week from March 30 to April 5, the death rate even
skyrocketed by 295 percent.
In
Clichy-sous-Bois, there are more cases of obesity, more diabetes patients and
more people in risk groups than in many other regions of the country. Still,
the Département has three times fewer intensive-care beds per capita than are
available in Paris. If more proof were needed that the pandemic in France has
hit low-wage earners, immigrants and the poor harder than others,
Clichy-sous-Bois is it.
The global
Black Lives Matter protests have also resonated strongly among the people here.
After all, racism is a daily fact of life in the banlieues, which are largely
populated by immigrants and their descendants. Tur and Kebe grew up with
arbitrary checks and police violence. "At some point, you get used to
their constant affronts. How they enjoy provoking you when they are standing in
front of you in their uniforms and giving you the feeling that you are nothing,"
says Tur. He was beat up by a policeman when he was younger, and the officer
received no punishment. In fact, he still patrols the neighborhood. "We
now get along just fine," he says.
Tur started
a training program as an automobile mechanic, but he didn't finish. He then
worked for a time at the technical inspection association. Before long, though,
he was unemployed. Indeed, the biggest constant in his life has been
Clichy-sous-Bois, located just 10 kilometers (around 6 miles) from Paris, yet
still cut off from the prosperity and wealth of the capital as though by an
invisible demarcation line.
Not Much
Change
It is
essentially a failed state in miniature. According to the most recent
statistics, unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds stands at 29 percent and the
average per-family income of 15,543 euros per year is among the lowest in
France. The poverty rate here is roughly three times as high as in neighboring
Paris. And despite all the promises from the various mayors who have occupied
City Hall in this town of 30,000 residents, and despite the different
presidents in the Élysée Palace - which is just an hour away by car, yet feels
like it is on the other side of the country – these circumstances haven't
changed much over the years.
Everyone in
this country must be guaranteed the ability to chart their own course,
regardless of origin, skin color or religion, French President Emmanuel Macron
said on Bastille Day in July. But in Clichy-sous-Bois, this promise is an empty
one. It lies there like a gigantic open wound.
Most white
people in France only know the banlieues as a kind of caricature, such as that
presented by the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen during her political
campaigns. Or from the cinema. Twenty-five years ago, the feature film "La
Haine" (Hate) delivered an impressive black-and-white portrayal of the
bleak banlieue life. Alain Juppé, who was prime minister at the time, even
arranged for a special screening for his entire cabinet, because he wanted them
to see a part of the country with which they were unfamiliar.
Last year,
a new film was released about life in the Paris suburbs. Sadly, not much has
changed in the intervening 25 years. The film is called "Les
Misérables" (like the Victor Hugo novel) and depicts life in
Clichy-sous-Bois.
The film's
director, Ladj Ly, is a 42-year-old who was born in Mali but grew up here. He
has become one of the most successful filmmakers in the country. He was awarded
the Jury Prize for "Les Misérables" at the Cannes Film Festival and
later won the César Award for best film of the year. His film was also
nominated in the best foreign film category at the Oscars. Since then, Ly has
been seen in the banlieues as a hero, because he showed that even someone from
Clichy-sous-Bois can make it big. And he also made their world visible.
Everyone Is
a Victim
On a
late-July summer evening, the director, dressed in a blue polo shirt,
sunglasses and a black baseball cap, is standing in a business park in Clichy
and eating a grilled lamb sausage. The film school that he founded here in 2018
is holding its summer party to mark the end of the academic year. At the grill
is the lead actor of the film that Tur and Kebe are currently filming, and the
two budding filmmakers are here as well. They have known Ly for quite some
time, and Mahmadou once lived in the same building as the director's family.
The
fascinating thing about Ly's film is that everyone is a victim of the same
system: the police, whose story he tells; the young men and women, who are
brutally persecuted by the officers; and the mothers, who worry about their
sons when they don't come home.
"Les
Misérables" is an SOS to the country's politicians, Ly has said in
interviews. Last year, he invited Macron to come watch the film with him in the
place where it was made. The French president declined the invitation, but had
a copy sent to him in the Élysée. After viewing it, he said that he had been
deeply shaken by what it depicted - as though the misery had been hidden to him
too.
Ly declined
all of the offers he received from Hollywood after his success at Cannes.
"My focus is to gain access for young people here to a world that has thus
far been closed to them," the director says at the summer party, leaning
against the hood of a car. "I want to make things possible for them. Why
shouldn't that be feasible here too?"
"Macaca"
He knows
how terrible the apartments are in Clichy-sous-Bois, how bad the schools are
and how deep the hate runs. His father worked as a garbage collector in Paris.
He was stopped by the police for the first time when he was 10. The cops called
him a "macaca," a monkey, but he didn't know at the time what the
word meant. Racism, Ly says, was a constant companion ever since he was a
child, adding that he has been stopped by the police more than a thousand times
in his life. "We have been enduring the police violence that everybody is
talking about at the moment for 20 years."
His school,
École Kourtrajmé, which he founded right in the heart of the banlieue, is a
challenge to the country's traditional elite schools. It costs nothing to
attend and is open to all: a school-leaving certificate is unnecessary. Each
year, 30 students are accepted, and the program lasts one year. After they are
finished, they still have access to the network of directors, producers and
cinematographers that Ladj Ly has developed over the years. It is the
well-established "alumni principle" used by elite universities around
the world, but this time, it is being made available to those with less
opportunity.
Tur and
Kebe are part of a course for youth from the two municipalities of
Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil: Each year, 12 of them take a seven-month
screenplay seminar that meets two evenings a week. In the past several months,
filmmakers like Spike Lee, George Lucas and Mathieu Kassovitz, the director of
"La Haine," have been guests in the course.
"We
were able to ask them questions, totally crazy," says Tur. A
"histoire de ouf," as he says. "Ouf is his rendering of
"fou," which means crazy. Part of banlieue slang includes reversing
the letters in certain words. And currently, there is quite a lot of
"ouf" in their lives.
Several
weeks ago, they traveled to Marseille together with Ly, where he has opened up
a second film school. Microphone in hand, Kebe spoke to 250 people for the
first time in his life, telling them about his screenplay. "They welcomed
us like kings, even though we're nobody," he says. "It was as if we
were no longer the same people."
"People
Look at You Differently"
It has
been, for them, a strange experience: For the first time in their lives, people
are listening to them and taking them seriously.
"You
say that you are at the École Kourtrajmé of Ladj Ly and people look at you
differently," says Tur. Even the police officers in the neighborhood, he
says, are treating him with more respect. "They're suddenly asking me how
the filming is going."
Electricians,
mechanics or an hourly wage job at Amazon: Those are normally the kinds of
things people do here - if you're lucky. If not, you live with your parents for
as long as you can. Never had anyone told the two young men that they could
also be film directors, actors or screenplay writers.
"For
as long as I can remember, I have only been discouraged. Every morning at
school, my teacher would yell at me whether I was on time or not. People only
see Clichy-sous-Bois as an address. They see that you are Black and named
Mahmadou. That's enough. At some point, you no longer want to be part of the
circus." Kebe says he started making small films with his mobile phone
when he was 12, but nobody noticed.
If you ask
Keben how many people live in his household, he starts counting with both
hands, reciting names as though he isn't totally sure. He stops at eight – he
has seven brothers and sisters, making for a total of 10 with his parents. Kebe
has never slept in a room by himself. "My life takes place elsewhere
anyway," he says. "Outside on the roofs, in the parking lot. You sit
on the hoods or in the cars and turn up the music. Then, you party."
He has
never had a permanent job, just temporary contracts. Until he applied last year
for École Kourtrajmé. Five of them cooperated on writing their screenplay: Tur,
himself and three friends he chose to help out. It tells the story of a young
man from Mali who comes to Clichy-sous-Bois to look for his cousin. The letters
the cousin sent home had made it sound like paradise - the eternal lie told by
many migrants. Once the young man from Mali arrives, he realizes that his
cousin makes his money on the black market, but was still unable to make ends
meet.
Making Do
They wanted
to show how hard life is in the suburbs, says Tur. People should know what is
in store for them – and stay at home instead of coming here.
At the end
of the day, Clichy-sous-Bois is a vast, urban misunderstanding. The crazy
architect's dream from the 1960s, which envisioned middle-class families buying
affordable, modern apartments here not far from the capital, never panned out.
The metro line announced at the time and the planned highway to Paris were
never built, the apartments disintegrated quickly, and the middle class found
other neighborhoods to be more attractive. The Chêne Pointu estate is now
considered the most run-down neighborhood in the whole country. It is allegedly
to be torn down by 2030, a plan that makes it all the less likely that the
apartments will get the attention they need. Residents will just have to make
do with what they have until then.
For the
last two days, Tur and Kebe have been filming in the apartment of their friend,
Gladys Chauvellier, an F4 apartment of 60 square meters (645 square feet). When
new renters move in, the landlord doesn't necessarily require proof of
earnings, instead preferring documentation that they are receiving the child
allowance from the state. That is more reliable.
Chauvellier
is 41 and has 10 children, aged two to 22, and eight of them still live with
her. Each room of the apartment is furnished with extra wide bunkbeds, while
she herself sleeps on the red, pleather sofa in the living room – where there
is absolutely nothing to indicate that they have been living here for four
years. There are no pictures on the walls, and no family photos.
During the
eight-week coronavirus lockdown, she hardly ever left the apartment. Every now
and then, the younger children went down to play soccer in the parking lot, but
that was it. "It actually brought us even closer together as a
family," says Chauvellier, who everyone in the neighborhood simply calls
"La Daronne," the boss, because she has her life and her 10 children
under control, even though she has been a single mother for years.
"For as long as I can remember, I have only been
discouraged. Every morning at school, my teacher would yell at me whether I was
on time or not."
Mahmadou Kebe
Chauvellier
is the only woman on the screenplay team. For weeks, they worked hard to
develop the plotline, before then writing through it once again with the help
of a film director from Spain who the school appointed to assist the group. It
was the first time in her life, Chauvellier says, that she had met up with
others for work. In their film, which they hope will ultimately be broadcast as
a web series, she plays one of the main roles. "Normally, I don't like
following orders. But this time, I liked it. I liked the fact that there was a
structure, an order."
"It's
a Wrap!"
The last
day of shooting takes place on a gigantic concrete slab in Clichy-sous-Bois.
The ground is covered in shards of glass and rusting shopping carts while
children nearby are trying to learn how to ride wheelies. It is a Friday
afternoon in July. Kebe stares in concentration at the camera-mounted screen,
Chauvellier is also there and Tur is standing next to the cameraman.
Khalid, the
youngest on the team, is wearing a mint-green outfit with white golf shoes and
white socks. Golf, according to the screenplay, is the secret passion of the
main character, played by Khalid. He is supposed to strike the ball like a
professional, with the director having shown him how to do so. It will be one
of the final scenes - a golf ball flying through the banlieue.
At 7:06
p.m., the first director's assistant calls out: "It's a wrap!"
Everyone looks startled, knowing that something has come to an end that they
may not ever experience again. Tur and Kebe have applied for the year-long
course, which starts in October. And Chauvellier is now writing new screenplays
on her mobile phone after the children go to bed. Notes with different colored
dots hang on the wall, which she has used to mark the leading and supporting
roles - separated by episode. Just like they are taught in the screenplay
seminar. But the dream of following in the footsteps of their idol Ladj Ly
won't come true for all of them. For many, hope will be followed by
disappointment.
That
evening, the cast and crew have drinks on the terrace of the Aram Café in the
Clichy-sous-Bois shopping center. The Spanish director Fabien Mariano Ortiz has
jotted down a few notes on his mobile phone for his speech. Glass in hand, he
stands up and begins speaking. He praises Chauvellier for her outstanding
achievement as an actress. "I seriously didn't expect such a gift."
He also commends Kebe for his calm, warm-hearted manner and his ability during
shooting to consistently make everything possible.
He then
turns to Tur, the cool and eloquent Tur who repeatedly took over the leadership
role in the preceding weeks. It sounds almost ceremonial when he says that only
people like Tur – people who are always on the lookout for the best shot, the
best approach, who are always trying to fight the chaos within – will be able
to get the stars to dance one day. Everybody raises their glass and applauds.
But Tur pulls his black cap down over
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