Journalist, Mouloud Achour has been present on Canal + since 2019, the program Click. In particular, he chairs the Click television channel on Canal + channels in 27 countries and the digital media Click, a space that mixes culture, society and humor. He has just co-directed with Dominique Baumard the film The villains released on Wednesday September 08 starring Ludivine Sagnier, Mathieu Kassovitz, Samy Naceri, Omar Sy, Pierre Palmade and Djimo.
franceinfo: The villains is a surprising film. We feel that there is a lot of you in it and we realize who you are, where you come from, what touched you, how you built yourself. I am wrong ?
Mouloud Achour: It is true that he is very personal. The challenge of this film was to think maybe that I will only be one in my life, so we might as well give everything and show who we are. Often when we touch on the genre that is comedy, it’s a very industrialized genre in France, we have a lot of archetypes. Me, I am a big fan, for example, of Mel Brooks, of Monty Python. Baron Münchhausen is one of my favorite movies of all time and I told myself that you have to be able to do a comedy like you do an auteur film, because the people I just mentioned are authors.
I wanted to approach comedy, to tell myself we are going to give of ourselves, we are going to give from our point of view to play a joke.
Mouloud Achourto franceinfo
It is the story of a young man who tries to get by, to survive. And since he has a good chat, he will try to live on petty theft. His life will completely turn on the wrong side since he will become the ‘bad guy’. It is a real look at the manipulation of information, fake news, on this need for millions of clicks to move forward and it is also a look at the profession of journalist which is more and more precarious.
It is a declaration of love for this profession. The profession of journalist, for me, is the last bulwark of democracy, especially in the presidential campaign that we are living. It’s a special year and it’s important that this movie comes out now because information, for me, shouldn’t be mixed with entertainment that year.
For example, at Click, we will not invite politicians this year because this mix of genres is complicated. The message of the film is quite simple: Rather than paying attention to the media noise that we are being sent all the time, do one very simple thing, instead of reading fake news, everything that is sent to you on WhatsApp groups. and social networks, get the candidates’ programs, get a voter card.
The noise must be made in silence in the ballot boxes and not in the media space.
Mouloud Achourto franceinfo
How did you get into journalism? Very little is known about you.
I was saved by the hip hop culture. I met the Immigration and Banlieues Movement, an association born at the time of the March for Equality. Later recovered by SOS Racisme and the Socialist Party, it became the March of the Arabs. It was a movement that was fighting at the time against the double penalty: prison + expulsion, which warned of the dangers of precariousness in the neighborhoods, spoke of police violence at a time when it was not audible.
They gave me a culture, an education and a way of reading the news that followed me. When I wanted to study journalism, I was told: “But you have to go to Villetaneuse college. After three years you might be able to go to journalism school“. In fact, I felt the ‘Garage Lane’ sign coming up because when I’m there, I see people dropping out after six months, a year, because just the journey took about 1 hour 45 minutes a day. day. So I did a very simple thing, I went to college and took the scholarship to produce a mixtape called Maybe someday, in which there was the group La Caution. Poster Mean guys is a tribute to this mixtape so everything is linked.
When was this film born in your head? For a very long time, you were asked to direct and you didn’t want to make a film to make a film.
I wanted to have things to say. And then there is a series of terrorist attacks in 2015 in France. Charlie Hebdo first, November 13th, then Nice. It falls when we are in the process of creating Click. We are lucky to have an interview, the last one granted, with Kanye West. It goes around the world and I am invited on a news channel and there, I am asked if I am in solidarity or not with what happened at the level of the attacks. I tell myself that there is a problem, that part of the French are being excluded from the national community, when it is not a government of the National Rally, but a socialist government.
The 2015 attacks were times when we had to unite with the whole country, include people of all origins to fight terrorism. It’s a missed moment. This moment of national communion could have been incredible. France could have shown all its greatness to the whole world and we were mediocre.
Mouloud Achourto franceinfo
I felt extremely insulted and I felt ‘bad’, in the same way as when I hear an interview with a trade unionist who demands rights for workers, he is considered a ‘bad guy’, when a woman asks for equal pay, she is considered ‘nasty’. When we make a mistake, immediately we are ostracized from the ‘bad guys’. This film The villains is a declaration of love for France and the second chance. We all have a messed up part of us and we are all someone’s ‘bad guy’.
The continuation would be to decline the adventures of Patrick and Sébastien, two characters of the film?
Yes. I think we are at a time when this country needs to laugh together.