The Boukherma brothers adapt the Goncourt 2018 with Gilles Lellouche and Anaïs Demoustier
Their children after them, based on the eponymous novel by Nicolas Mathieu, will be released in cinemas in September 2024.
The 2018 Goncourt Prize, Their children after themtranslated into more than 20 languages and sold more than 700,000 copies, will be adapted for the cinema by the brothers Zoran and Ludovic Boukherma (Teddy, The Year of the Shark). The film, announced with a budget of 12 million euros, is a Warner Bros. production. France, HBO Max and France Télévisions and will be released in theaters on September 18, 2024. Filming is planned in the Grand Est region, it started in July and will run until next October.
After several project proposals it is that of the producers Hugo Selignac And Alain Attal who knew how to touch the author. “Nicolas Mathieu had been approached by many filmmakers who all wanted to make very naturalistic adaptations, we told him that we had bigger ambitions, something in the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese“, Attal told Variety. “We want to put a bit of romance into the radical and austere world depicted in the book. We said to ourselves that we weren’t going to make it a happy film, but that we wanted to inject a little beauty and light into this small town. It struck a chord“.
The story takes place in the 90s. An ode to freedom, especially on social injustices, it tells that of 14-year-old Antony, a luminous character who does not want the life that awaits him. When you grow up in a region devastated by deindustrialization, you dream of a different place. Taking a boat to see further is like discovering a new country. The adventure begins.
The distribution promises to be attractive, with Paul Kircher (nominated for the César for best hope for The high school student), Anais Demoustier (Caesar the best actress for the film Alice and the Mayor), Sayyid al-Alami (seen in the series Oussekine), Angelina Woreth (The Rascals) And Gilles Lellouche.
The adaptation of Nicolas Mathieu by the Boukherma brothers promises a meeting between Stephen King and Georges Pelecanos. The 31-year-old twins have made a name for themselves with their feature film work, Willy 1st (2015), presented at ACID at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, before confirming their talent with Teddyemblem of a revival of French-style genre cinema, selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2020. There is no doubt that the two brothers will know how to keep the DNA of the novel with skill while grafting their paw (of a werewolf) on it.
