Jean-Bernard Marlin Talks Mixing Fantasy & Reality in Cannes Title ‘Salem’ Shot In Tough Marseille Neighborhood + First Clip
23.05.2023 - 11:49
/ deadline.com
EXCLUSIVE: French director Jean-Bernard Marlin made waves in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2018 with Marseille-set feature debut Shéhérazade about the relationship between a young prostitute and an underage ex-convict who becomes her pimp.
The film went on to win best first film alongside most promising actress and actor for Kenza Fortas and Dylan Robert at the 2019 edition of France’s César awards.
Marlin returns to Cannes this year with his second feature Salem which world premieres in Un Certain Regard.
Like Shéhérazade, the feature captures the reality of Marseille’s notoriously crime and poverty-ridden northern quarters with a documentary approach but differs in that Marlin has added a layer of fantasy to the tale.
“I don’t invent anything in what I am showing, but at the same time, this film is a work of the imagination. It’s an allegory, with dreamlike and fantasy qualities,” says Marlin.
The film follows Comorian teenager Djibril who gets involved with a Romani girl living in a rival neighborhood.
When she falls pregnant, Djibril at first asks her to get an abortion, fearing their relationship will enflame local gangland tensions. But then, he unwittingly becomes an accessory to the murder of a friend, who utters a curse against him in his final breath as he dies in his arms.
Traumatized, Djibril comes to believe that his unborn child possesses healing powers that will save him and his entire neighborhood from a cataclysmic event that awaits. Scroll down for a first, subtitled clip.
In and out of prison and mental institutions, he reconnects with his daughter as a teenager, sweeping her up in his obsession with her powers.
“The child enters into the interior world of her father. It’s a kind of transmission.