The true story behind “Lycée Toulouse-Lautrec”, the new TF1 series
TF1’s new “Red Bracelets”? Possible ! This Monday, January 9, 2023, the private channel is programming the first two episodes of a new series called “Lycée Toulouse Lautrec” in prime time. The six-episode fiction tells the story of Victoire, a teenager forced to join an extraordinary high school to follow her brother. Faced with Marie-Antoinette, a sparkling quadriplegic or Charlie, suffering from a brain tumour, the young woman, refractory at first, will gradually overcome her prejudices and discover friendship, love, solidarity but also humor, courage and strength of all his comrades.
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Driven by Stephane de Groodt, Rayane Bensetti, Valerie KarsentiAure Atika and the China Thybaud revelation, this fiction crowned best series in the La Rochelle Fiction Festival recounts the daily life of the students of the real Toulouse-Lautrec establishment, which welcomes teenagers with disabilities. It is also in the premises of the high school located in the town of Vaucresson near the forest of Rueil-Malmaison that TF1 set up its cameras to shoot the first six episodes of the series.
“Throughout filming, the school was in operation. Almost all of the extras are students or former students. Some nursing staff also participated in the series (…) This immersion in reality is felt in the series. The Toulouse Lautrec establishment is unique in France and shown as it is on a daily basis“, explained the actress Chine Thybaud (Victoire) in the press kit for the series.
“This series is taken from my story, it happened to me as a teenager”
Guest of the Medias en Seine festival (including puremedias.com was a partner) last November, Fanny Riedberg, producer, writer and director of the series revealed that this story was simply hers. “This series is taken from my story, it happened to me as a teenager“, she had designated before revealing the reasons which led him to adapt this chapter of his life: “What made me want to tell this story is that I have an eleven-year-old child and I realized one day that he had never met anyone with a disability and that if he had to happen to him, I think he would have been surprised to see aperé because there is a lack of knowledge on his part. I lived with these people for three years, it’s part of my schooling, I no longer see the disability and I don’t understand that even today it can be destabilizing. As an author, there is a part of example, we must represent society as it is and they are part of it”
Fanny Riedberger had all the same refuted the idea of having created a series on the handicap. “I did a series on teenagers, on high school, but absolutely not a series on disabilities. It turns out that within this high school some of the students have motor disabilities. That understands me very at heart not to do a series on disability because it stigmatizes, it already marginalizes something that we try to include“, she indicated before justifying the filming of this series in a high school during”a turning point in our lives“.”I think it’s during this period that we build ourselves and that we need benchmarks. We’ve been told ever since we were little to do a bit like everyone else, to fit into boxes. That’s what made me want to shed light on that age“, she revealing.
“Some adult comedians have discovered a world they don’t know”
The producer, author and director who has worked in the past on “Scènes de Ménages”, “Chérif”, or “En Famille” hopes that “Lycée Toulouse-Lautrec” will raise awareness. “There is a whole accompaniment to do. We do this kind of project to avoid the fear of the unknown, the a priori. Even in my technical team, some confused motor handicap with mental handicap. Even some adult comedians have discovered a world they don’t know. I think there was a before and after for them and I hope that’s what will happen with the broadcast of the series on TF1“, she concluded.