They are undoubtedly more likely to lift the World Cup one day than an Oscar, but Antoine Dupont and Romain Ntamack have assured in recent weeks in the media and on the red carpets of the "promo" of the film ontheir club.
It was to be at the start of a sports documentary series in the minds of those who are currently hitting on streaming platforms, such as the "Drive to Survive" of Netflix on the universe of Formula 1.
The film's trailer on the Toulouse stadium is released!pic.twitter.com/erov4icjlt
— Gauthier Baudin (@GauthierBaudin) January 20, 2022Since they did something exceptional, we tried to work on an exceptional goal
The 2020-2021 History of Toulouse rugby players, authors of the double European Cup - Championship, prompted the production team to try the experience of cinema rather."Things have imposed themselves a bit on their own," says Eric Hannezo, co-director.For the director of Black Dynamite, producer of the film, "rugby has only cinematographic qualities".
A "snobbery" of French cinema
Its combative dimension, its values and dramaturgy seem to make discipline a good support for the seventh art.Relatively few films were devoted to him.
The famous "Invictus" by Clint Eastwood on the victory of South Africa during the 1995 World Cup, erected as a symbol of reconciliation after apartheid, the old comedy "go France!"(1964) On supporters of the Blues on the move in England for the V Nations tournament ... Julien Camy has identified around thirty, XIII rugby included ("the price of a man" especially in 1963), compiling withHis father Gérard Le Bel Book "Sport et Cinéma".
If you want to make a rugby film on the success story of a kid from the neighborhoods that ends half the scrum of the French team and wins the World Cup final against the All Blacks, you have to be Clint Eastwood and have100 or 150 million
"The United States, the largest provider of sports films, is not a rugby country," said the author."Sports that have been the most filmed are those widely practiced in the United States, such as American football, baseball or boxing."
The filmmaker and journalist, Julien Camy points "a certain reluctance" and a certain "snobbery" among French producers vis-à-vis sport.An opinion shared by the former Racing player, who has become a director, Philippe Guillard, even if his first film, "The son in Jo", anchored in the world of rugby, was successful in theaters in 2011 with more'1.2 million entries.
A human aspect
These budgetary constraints do not help to cross the main pitfall: to make credible the game scenes of a technical sport whose complexity of the rules also often escapes the general public.
You can't cheat on it, you have to take real rugby players.In Invictus, rugby is played by federal 3 guys who have nothing to do with Jonah Lomu and company
"We immediately see a guy who knows how to make a pass or not, his position in melee ...", deciphers Philippe Guillard which forces the directors to "take different angles", more distant from the game, to deal with rugby, like Sacha Wolff and his "mercenary" (2016) on a young Wallisian player confronted with the uprooting after having come to try his luck in mainland France.
This human aspect will be at the heart of the new film on rugby that the former French champion in 1990, prepares for the World Cup next year in France: "I am happy to find my DNA", confides-Al.
It will be the story of refugees who discover, in the Southwest French, another type of war: that of bell towers around an oval ball.Neither Dupont nor Ntamack will appear this time in the credits.
