“Ma part de Gaulois”, a film adapted from a novel by Magyd Cherfi shot in Toulouse
A film adapted from a novel by Magyd Cherfi shot in Toulouse. It is called “Ma part de Gaulois” and it is freely adapted from the novel of the same name published by the former singer of Zebda in 2016. This film which tells the Toulouse childhood of a young boy of Algerian origin, his relationship with his mother, his dreams of music and emancipation in the late 1970s and early 1980s. ends on December 16. It lasted a month.
“We tell similar stories”
For Malik Chibane, the director, this film which stands out from the novel but without betraying its spirit: ” About a name change. His name is Mourad Cherkaoui and not Magyd Cherfi. Other elements have been changed: Magyd is in love with words while Mourad is more of an average student. But it’s a universe that is not foreign to me: Magyd is from Algeria, me too. We followed more or less the same stories, the same paths: the election of Mitterrand, the anti-racist emancipation movements, etc. So I think Magyd Cherfi and I are kind of from the same family. Similar stories are told with a common sensibility. »
A film to “evacuate limiting thoughts”
Mourad, the character is interpreted by Abdallah Charki. A scenario he found universal: “This book and this film are about limiting thoughts that we have and that we must evacuate. Unfortunately, when you live in the same environment all the time, you don’t see other horizons. Magyd Cherfi was able to discover other universes, push away those limiting thoughts and say it was possible: possible to have the goal, possible to make music. If you believe in something deep within yourself, you can achieve it.”
The portrait of an immigrant woman “with authenticity and complexity”
The other main character is Mourad’s mother, played by Algerian actress Adila Bendimerad. A character who touched her a lot : “It’s a shoot on which I had a great pleasure to play. Playing with all these codes, all this history. I live in Algiers, I have just had a child, and I arrived on this film by playing A mother who comes from Algeria Somewhere tells the story of my family, who have already been in France for several generations. It is necessarily a story that speaks to mewhich is mine without being mine.”
A role of mother that Malik Chibane wanted to highlight: “This film is also an opportunity to portray an immigrant womanAlgerian, North African, with authenticity and complexity. We may be leaving a cycle. Perhaps not that of the caricature, but that of the sketch. The physical presence of North African immigration in France dates back to the 1950s. This common history is beginning to date. And despite that, we don’t have that many films that offer intense portraits of North African women. I’m not going to say it’s new, that would be pretentious. But I hope that it’s a new look. »
The film was partly shot at the Grand Set studio in Colomiers. Listen to the report from France Bleu Occitanie on the last day of filming:
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“My part of Gaul”, freely adapted from the novel by Magyd Cherfi should be released in 2024.