Suprêmes NTM: how a French rap legend was born

How did the idea for this biopic come to you?

I'd always wanted to make a film about hip hop culture. It's an extremely powerful genre of music, both in terms of society and the industry. It's the world's most listened-to type of music, and has the biggest influence on fashion. But there's stigma surrounding it in France. I had the concept for the film, but not the narrative.

How did you get from that to NTM?

JoeyStarr's biography. In the book, twenty pages are given over to how hip hop emerged in France, the social and political context that shaped it. It was born ten years earlier in the States, but it struggled to cross the Atlantic. NTM were one of France's pioneers.

Why a biopic rather than a documentary?

Americans aren't the only ones with heroes! These guys are absolutely legendary in France, they're true icons. What they achieved, musically speaking, is huge. They have a heroic aspect to them that I wanted to elevate through fiction. That's why I decided not to go for a 'lip-synching' approach. I wanted to do them justice.

You decided to focus on the 1988-1992 years…

That was when NTM took off for real. When they released their debut album, there were three major riots in the banlieues. They're often accused of having sparked it all, but that's not what they were saying. The film paints a musical portrait rooted in a very specific, powerful social and political context. I chose to hold onto the years where these two aspects came together.

How did you work with the trio?

We prioritised getting them to share anecdotes. Sometimes, the same moment or scene was completely different in each of their memories. We had to stay level-headed. Once they read through the screenplay, they sent us the changes they wanted to make to very tangible things, but we always led the process.

One of the challenges was finding the actors to play them…

Casting took six months. Once I had five potential JoeyStarrs and Kool Shens, I shut the applicants away in a theatre, and we worked on their acting, dancing, and rapping for a week. Théo Christine and Sandor Funtek most resemble the two in their body language, their facial expressions, and the way they talk. We worked hard at it.

You captured all the energy of the period, visually speaking…

The film is in a constant state of movement, but nothing was shot hand-held. I always had this vision of thirty guys with huge amounts of energy to be funnelled. It seemed obvious we needed to get right up close and personal. We zoomed in close to their faces and bodies. We also put a lot of work into the sound, over and above the music.

Do you have an on-set anecdote to share with us?

During the first gig we shot, the actors were incredibly tense. I kept a whole sequence in which JoeyStarr throws up, even though that never happened to him in real life on that night! It was the actor getting all his stress out on stage!