Deadline is reporting that writer/director Ladj Ly‘s feature debut Les Misérables has sold to Amazon Studios in one of the biggest domestic deals ever for a French-language movie at the Cannes Film Festival
It’s in the vein of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine and Fernando Meirelles’ City Of God and is the only debut in the Official Competition for the Palme d’Or. The deal is understood to be between $1-2M.
Inspired by the 2005 Paris riots, and Ly’s César-nominated short film of the same name, Les Misérables takes a provocative look into the tensions between neighborhood residents and police. It centers on Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), who has recently joined the anti-crime brigade in Montfermeil, the Paris suburb where Victor Hugo set his classic novel Les Misérables. Alongside his new colleagues Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwada (Djibril Zonga) — both experienced members of the team — he quickly discovers tensions running high between local gangs. When the trio finds themselves overrun during the course of an arrest, a drone captures the encounter, threatening to expose the reality of everyday life.
A member of the Kourtrajmé collective (started up by Romain Gavras and Kim Chapiron) since 1996, Ladj Ly has a thorough knowledge of the environment where he has set his storyline and which he previously tackled in his documentary 365 jours à Clichy-Montfermeil (2005), about the urban riots, and the docu-fiction Go Fast Connection (2008), which took issue with how the media portrayed the subur
Ly went on to direct his first short film, Montfermeil Les Bosquets in 1997. In 2004, he co-wrote the documentary 28 Millimeters with renowned photographer JR, who’s best known for his large format street photographs.
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