Yassine Lassar, 29, is a math teacher who lives in the neighborhood. Les Misérables won the 2019 Jury Prize at Cannes. Lined with high-rise housing projects, factories and dingy kebab shops, it looks nothing like the Paris audiences are used to seeing on screen.ĭirector Ladj Ly is pictured following the awards ceremony at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019. It's a place plagued by police violence, ethnic clashes and little opportunity.

This is the France the country's politicians love to idealize - a country where people of all classes, colors and religions can feel united under a common French fierté.īut then the scene shifts to the dreary working-class suburb of Montfermeil. The streets are flooded with people from all backgrounds draped in the colors of the French flag.

But this film is a modern-day cop thriller - and it's France's entry to the Oscars.Īs the new Les Misérables opens, France has just won the World Cup and an ecstatic group of black teenagers is making its way into central Paris. It is set in the same Paris suburb that inspired part of the 19th-century classic, and it is about that neighborhood's impoverished residents. The new film, Les Misérables, is not another adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel and it's definitely not a musical. Ladj Ly's 2019 film Les Misérables opens on an ecstatic scene - France has just won the World Cup and happy Parisians are celebrating in the streets.

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