"It's impossible to deal with NTM without being political"

• This Wednesday releases

  Suprêmes 

  , the biopic on NTM.

• Directed by Audrey Estrougo, the film focuses on the first three years of the group formed by JoeyStarr and Kool Shen, from its birth in Seine-Saint-Denis to its first great successes.

• Music industry, hip-hop philosophy, protest… The director answered questions from

  20 Minutes

  .

"What can a young being born in a soulless neighborhood hope for?" Pronounced during a speech in Cergy-Pontoise in 1990, this sentence by François Mitterrand resonates from the first minutes of

, the biopic on NTM in theaters this Wednesday. Directed by Audrey Estrougo, the film looks at the genesis of the pioneers of French rap, JoeyStarr and Kool Shen (played by the talented Théo Christine and Sandor Funtek), from the birth of the group in 1989 to the eve of their first Zenith in 1992. .

Suprêmes

is also immersed in a time when the voice of a stigmatized youth resounds on the outskirts of cities and "who have hope by taking a microphone and raising awareness that things can change", explains Audrey Estrougo.

met the director.

Your film is about a hip-hop group from Seine-Saint-Denis, but not only.

What was your ambition with 

Suprêmes 

?

I obviously wanted to tell about the emergence of hip-hop in France and the musical destiny of the first French rap group that is NTM. The small additional dimension compared to this group and what binds me to them is that I also grew up in the 93. At the time there was no Kylian Mbappé, they are the first who we placed on a map and told us otherwise than with various facts. What I found interesting in their story and what made me want to make this film is that their rise hits head-on when France discovers itself from young people from the suburbs. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a series of riots and when you hit pause at that point,it is ultimately a good way to question today's society and to question why there have been forty years of abandonment of young people from neighborhoods by politicians.

The film opens with a speech by François Mitterrand in which he mentions in particular the riots that took place on the outskirts of Lyon, in Vaulx-en-Velin, a few weeks earlier.

A way to recontextualize the appearance of this music in France with the situation of the suburbs?

It is above all a way of contextualizing the time in itself rather than the direct link with the music.

To open with Mitterrand is already broader, it is to say that the film will question itself there.

But whether we take François Mitterrand or all the others, what have they changed?

Nothing.

The film deals with the riots in the suburbs, the abandonment of a youth, the rise of the extreme right… When you make a film on NTM and on this time it is necessarily a little political?

Politics has always been in their DNA. Already by their texts, hyper engaged and still relevant. The Front National, they made it an enemy to be chased from their first album. They never hid it, they were really the reflection of a youth who had hope, by taking a microphone and raising awareness, that things could change. And that is very important, because this notion of hope is certainly what differentiates them from the young people of today, who live in another society, who are therefore another youth and who do not no longer has that hope. And that is really felt in the texts that come out today. It's impossible for me to deal with NTM without being political.Especially since the policy used NTM to clear its inaction in the suburbs and make them wear the hat of violence.

There is a dissenting aspect to NTM from the start, but as one of the scenes in the film highlights, there is also this fear of being reduced to representing the suburbs.

They were very quickly locked up and dissociated from what they were there for, which is their music. We refused to listen to what they had to say in the end. "What you say who cares, you are young people from the neighborhoods, so the same as those who burn cars, so explain to us". You can also find that in the cinema. For my first film, which takes place in the suburbs, the questions you are never asked are never about your cinema, about what made you want to do it, your inspirations ... When you make a first film and you are 26 years old, you are only asked questions about "what about the suburbs this, the suburbs that?" »I replied that it was not my job, I am not an educator, I am not a sociologist, not a politician… I do not know! Neither they nor I come by saying they have the answers.We make a statement. The rest is not for us to do, it is not our job.

The film ends just before the boycott period that will follow for NTM.

Did you discuss all this with them and what they could have been reduced to sometimes?

Of course, there was a lot of discussion about it, especially since it would potentially be the subject of a second film over this entire period.

They were boycotted, condemned… They were the first musicians who were forbidden to practice their art, so they know that they have been instrumentalized in a way.

And unfortunately they did not understand straight away - now with hindsight they realize - that it was a losing battle.

After that, what made them super strong is that despite all that they are still there when they have not made albums for twenty years.

In another scene from the film, Kool Shen says that “hip-hop is not a market, it is a philosophy”.

What I like about this scene is that it's both the birth and the death of hip-hop in France. Birth because by this meeting hip-hop will exist, their rap will be signed, they will be produced and they will be able to be listened to. And dead because in fact the hip-hop philosophy - Afrika Bambaataa's “Peace, unity, love and having fun” and what he created hip-hop for-, from the moment an industry started to grow. grab it, it's over. And the same goes for any artistic discipline. If you are on a purely industrial basis, we no longer do art in fact, we do cipher, slaughter, trade. That's what happened with rap. In the end, the hip-hop philosophy as it was thought, created and dubbed, it only lasted a very short time.From the moment the record companies entered the equation, it was over.

So 30 years later we are very far from this essence of hip-hop ...

We are very far from it, but also because society has changed and we do not make the same artists.

No matter what discipline we practice, we are an echo of the world in which we live.

Of course we each have different sensitivities and interpretations, whether we are doing music or cinema, but rap 2021 cannot necessarily be the same as that of 1989. It's impossible, without even talking about who is rapping and what he says.

They are not the same world so they are not the same young people.

These are not the same demands and the same aspirations, it is not the same context.

A scene bridges the gap with another youth, that of punk.

Rap is the punk of the 1990s?

In any case, French rap is the child of French punk.

It just happened naturally.

The punk refusing to the music industry, he made a hara-kiri.

It hit a glass ceiling very quickly, it didn't develop, where rap took over.

We keep the same political, societal theme and turned towards our neighbor.

But when rap enters the music industry, it is deported, it becomes something else.

NTM did a lot of punk scenes at the beginning.

Since there was no rap, the rap scenes did not exist, there was no place for that music.

We put them with the punks.

They can also be found in the same underground places.

Yes we put them in the same place, a bit of niche music, rebel, anarchist, that's how we classified rap at the beginning.

When I am asked the question "in your opinion, which rapper today is the worthy heir of NTM?

", I answer" all "!

Because they created everything guys.

They put the tar on a potato field, they made a road and everyone took it.

Series

Arte is preparing a series on the genesis of NTM

Culture

Why NTM, 20 years later, is still “the bomb, baby!”

• Joeystarr

• Movie theater

• Rap

• Biopic

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