Black Flies: an interview with Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire
After the chilling journey of the child soldier Johnny Mad Dog (Un Certain Regard Prix de l’espoir, 2008) and the story of the hell lived by the young boxer Billy Moore (A Prayer Before Dawn, Out of Competition, 2017), Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire entered the 2023 Competition with Black Flies, a new realistic dive into ultra-violent daily life. Adapted from Shannon Burke’s novel “911”, Black Flies takes us on a dark, convulsive thriller alongside two New York emergency doctors played by Sean Penn and Tye Sheridan. At Cannes, the director talked about the genesis of his film, which opens in French cinemas on April 3.
How did the project come about?
The producers suggested Shannon’s book to me over five years ago. I was interested in it because it was so true-to-life, but also because of my connection to Shannon’s fictional character, a young New York paramedic named Ollie Cross. The daily violence of his new job makes him question his spirituality and his relationship with death and life, and changes the way he sees the world and himself. Shannon’s book is set in the 1990s in Harlem, in a different era of crack, guns, gangs and AIDS. I wanted to adapt this story to the present day, not in Harlem, but in Brooklyn, in some of the neighbourhoods that still conjure up that atmosphere today.
Is realism important to you?
It’s true that reality, in its documentary form, is important to me as a narrative tool to construct fiction. I always need to believe in the situations I’m going to film. And to know the truth of it and to be able to transcribe it, you have to confront it. So my first approach was to meet Shannon and go with him, i, Tye Sheridan and the writer to the “crime scene”.. The second step was to put on the uniform of an ambulance driver and for more than a year, thanks to Wyckoff Hospital in Brooklyn, to have the chance to experience for ourselves the various situations that we see in the film.
Is this adaptation faithful to the book?
It seems to me, strangely enough, that the more we allow ourselves to be unfaithful to it in the writing, in the shooting, the more faithful the film will be to it. At least I hope so. Because the important thing is basically what the author of the book says in its universality. By the way, Shannon took part in the writing of the screenplay for Black Flies. After that, changing the time, the context, the neighbourhood, forces us to adapt the situations.
Tell us a little about your actors?
I must admit that all the actors in the film, at different levels, impressed me greatly. Working with Sean Penn is a real privilege, he gives his character an experience and an emotion that only he could bring. The same goes for Tye Sheridan who’s already had an incredible career despite his young age and who totally let himself go, pushing his limits without any fear, while making his character bright and angelic.