“Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s ‘Black Flies’: A Gritty Journey into the Forgotten Corners of New York”

It’s a New York where only New Yorkers venture. The New York of the lost corners of Bushwick, the left behind, the forgotten. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, the French director previously author of “Johnny Mad Dog” (2008) and “A Prayer Before Dawn” (2017), set up his cameras there for his third feature film, entitled ” Black Flies “. He did not need to travel far since he has lived in the neighborhood for fifteen years. But his talents convinced the Cannes Film Festival to include the film in its Official Selection, in competition for the Palme d’Or along with 20 other films and prestigious directors (Kaurismaki, Anderson, Triet, Kore-Eda, Moretti, Ceylan, Loach, Wenders, etc.).

“Cannes, it becomes like a family, since my first two feature films had already been selected there, Johnny Mad Dog in the Un Certain Regard category, and A Prayer Before Dawn in the midnight selection, out of competition, he confides from his house in Bushwick, a few days before flying to France. Finding yourself in the official selection is a nice surprise but it is progress. »

Inspired by a book

The film, inspired by a book by Shannon Burke of the same name (“911” in its French translation), tells the daily life of a young paramedic, played by Tye Sheridan (“The Tree of Life”, “Mud”), who discovers the trade in the company of an experienced and disillusioned colleague (Sean Penn). We inevitably think of “À Tombeau Ouvert”, the film by Martin Scorsese (1999) with a similar theme and setting -New York-.

“The difficulty was: how to make my film about New York, without falling into repetition, detaching myself from everything I had been able to store up to then? acknowledges the director. There are plenty of films that I admire that filmed New York. This is also why I came to live here. I wanted to film the city like a boiling body, like an artery with its vessels, something organic. The city is shown as a trap from which one cannot escape. New York became a character in the film. I wanted to film it as an experience, something immersive, in a kind of New York that is rarely shown in cinemas today. »

Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire and his teams filmed a lot at night, in a very short time (23 days), a little in Chinatown or in the Bronx but especially in Bushwick. “In my house and in places around it, in a laundromat around the corner, in an Asian take-out, in an apartment a little further, he says. Bushwick is a bit like this fascinating New York that is disappearing. A New York reminiscent of the 80s and 90s. A mythical New York that no longer really exists. I liked shooting in a New York that was still a bit in its original state. Bushwick is a kind of Tower of Babel, with lots of different origins. »

Mike Tyson starring

The means have been reduced and the technique limited, voluntarily. “I wanted to capture the city as it is, to be on a level playing field, he explains. My cinema is closer to documentary in form. I wanted to show the reality of New York. Show this more popular face of the city, this almost Third World side, this social misery which is very strong here. People are forced to fend for themselves, it’s quite hard but it gives them a lot of energy and generosity. »

History is a pretext. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire continues to include themes that are dear to him: violence, redemption, spirituality. His choice of actors was very strict from the start (Mike Tyson, a child from Brooklyn, is also on the bill) and the intense preparatory work: the director spent a year and a half, at the pace of one or two days a week, in immersion with the paramedics of the Wyckoff hospital, to store as many details as possible.

“I wanted us to be precise with every gesture, he justifies. I wanted to be able to understand the violence of the city and how it all fits together. The job of paramedic seemed interesting to me because paramedics enter into people’s privacy, into their apartments, at times when these people are very vulnerable. » A New York far from postcards, but a New York surely more faithful to reality.

Release dates for the film in the United States and France have yet to be set.