Barely a decade after graduating from film school, Gallic twin brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma are poised for an international breakthrough when their fourth feature, “And Their Children After Them,” premieres in competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
'Our Ties': First Trailer for Roschdy Zem's Venice Competition Title (English Subtitles)
Based on a literary sensation that won the Prix Goncourt, the French equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, the film explores teenage grief and working-class drudgery in a novelistic style. It’s a coming-of-age power ballad, full of operatic emotion and hit singles.
“We wanted to transform a story that consisted of quite ordinary, small conflicts into something big and cinematic,” says director Zoran Boukherma, who wrote the book with his brother Ludovic after actor-filmmaker Gilles Lellouche gave them a copy of the book over lunch two years ago.
“That idea came from our conversation with Gilles and with [original author] Nicolas Mathieu, who realized that a very small incident could lead to the downfall of an entire family. The book explores the tragedy of ordinary people and the romance of everyday life, and we had to do the same [on a cinematic scale],” says Ludovic Boukherma.
