2023-07-06 16:10:08
An undercover cop falls in love with a zadist on Disney +, a group of American teenagers show how to blow up a pipeline in “Sabotage”: ZAD and movement for the fight for ecology at the center of two films, French and American , which will be released in the next few days.
We had left François Civil and Lyna Khoudri as D’Artagnan and Madame Bonacieux exchanging a chaste kiss, at the end of the first part of the Three Musketeers in spring. Things go much faster between them in A Zone to Defenda melodrama on the background of environmental struggle, which is released Friday on Disney +.
In the film, François Civil plays Greg, a young and ambitious spook in the service of Internal Intelligence, responsible for infiltrating a community living in autonomy which is fighting against the construction of a dam. As soon as he arrives, he falls under the spell of the dreadlocks of Myriam (Lyna Khoudri), one of the Zad’s most capped activists. From this meeting will be born a baby of which Greg, left towards other missions, will learn the existence only months later.
Will the undercover cop betray his mission for her? Will Myriam choose between struggle and love? “What can be the image of an impossible love in the 21st century?“, asks the director of the film, Romain Cogitore. He explains that he was inspired in particular by a vast scandal of infiltrations of left-wing or environmental groups by British police officers, some of whom had children with their targets.
“Not glamorous”
The “Zones to Defend” and other autonomous communities have so far been the subject of little popular fiction, or so at the fourteenth degree, as in the comedy Problems, by Eric Judor (2017). In the United States, director Kelly Reichardt ventured there ten years ago, with Night Moveswhere Jesse Eisenberg was conducting a clandestine operation against a dam.
“I wanted to be extremely faithful, not to be above ground“, develops for his part Romain Cogitore, who for this has immersed himself in one of the largest Zad in France, where he has “explained his project“to activists.”I am not the only one to have this desire to tell the Zad or the investment of militants but it is complicated in the production system. We are told that it is not glamorous“, he continues.
Ironically, it was ultimately Disney+, the platform of a multinational entertainment company, symbol of triumphant capitalism, which allowed the film to be made. “They dove head first (into the project) because they liked it. Why and how, I don’t know. It’s still a joyful astonishment on my part.“, says the filmmaker, who hopes to reach a wide audience.
Existential threat
A hope shared by the American director of Sabotage, which is due out in hundreds of theaters on July 26. The film could be talked about: it presents itself as an adaptation of the environmental essay How to sabotage a pipeline. This book by Swede Andreas Malm was cited in support of the government’s dissolution in mid-June of the Earth Uprisings movement, which he allegedly inspired.
In Sabotage, a group of young Americans disgusted by the ineffectiveness of non-violent militant actions decide to manufacture explosives to blow up a pipeline in Texas. Their preparation is described by the menu. Does the film advocate violence, as the Earth Uprisings, supported by the left as well as environmental and human rights associations, have been accused of?
“If someone blows up a pipeline, it won’t be because of the movie they saw. But because the human species must defend itself against the greatest existential threat since the beginning of its history“, namely climate change, said director Daniel Goldhaber.
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