Demolition Man
GAGARINE | As his home crumbles to the ground, one man’s gaze turns to the stars…
In August 2019, the housing project of Cité Gagarine was torn down. This vast structure had been a towering feature of Ivry-sur-Seine, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, for 56 years. It had been built by the Communist Party of France and named after the first man into space, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who attended the inauguration in 1963.
Fascinatingly, filmmakers Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh had been invited to Paris to make a documentary on the inhabitants of Gagarine. They fell in love with the place and the people, and made a narrative short, Gagarine, in 2015. The love affair didn’t end there; they extended the short into a feature that’s now attracting rave notices.
“We shot the film just before the demolition two years ago,” says Trouilh. “We shot inside the building, roommates with the demolition team. They let us use the furniture of the inhabitants and many small details of past lives. Then this huge steel mouth came, and ate up Gagarine. It began on 31 August 2019.”
Rather than make a social-realist drama, Liatard and Trouilh opted for magical realism, carefully feathering
the grounded drama with soaring fantasy sequences. The source of the imagination on display is the head of 17-year-old protagonist Youri (Alseni Bathily), a dreamer who refuses to leave his beloved building as the demolition team move in, and instead hides away in its maze of rooms and corridors. His fantasy is to be a cosmonaut like Yuri Gagarin, and his imagination takes flight.
“We love him,” says Liatard of their young lead actor Bathily. “We looked for Youri for six months. We cast from the street. We wanted a young face that was someone who had never acted. Alseni had something of childhood in his eyes, really pure.” Trouilh cuts in. “During shooting, Alseni’s dad came. He’s from Senegal, and it was really emotional, because when he arrived, he realised Gagarine was actually the first place he’d spent time in when he arrived in France. He had a cousin there. So we didn’t find our Youri in Gagarine, but he had a strong link with the place.”
Using a mix of professional actors and inhabitants, Gagarine is also informed by the latter’s aspirations and bonds, as witnessed by the filmmakers when they spent time in the housing project. It is a film to inspire.
“We really hope so,” says Trouilh. “There is reality, and reality can be tough, but we wanted our characters to be able to look up and find strength in the dreams and the community around them. To be able to fight this tough life and grow. We wanted this movie to be full of hope and positivity.” JG
ETA | 24 SEPTEMBER / GAGARINE OPENS IN CINEMAS NEXT MONTH.