Bobigny (AFP)

The Kourtrajmé film school, launched in 2018 by Ladj Ly, winner of the Jury Prize in Cannes, will take its final quarters in Montfermeil (Seine-Saint-Denis), where the artist JR will lead a new training in art and in the picture.

Free, with no age and diploma requirements, this school for "those who want but can not afford to access film schools" has already trained 30 students in the script, the realization and the post -production. More than 1,500 people, 90% from the outskirts of major cities, had applied.

Housed initially by Medicis Workshops, installed by the state in Clichy-sous-Bois, home of urban violence in 2005, the school will move in early 2020 in its own premises, in the nearby town of Montfermeil, said Ladj Ly to AFP.

The call for applications for the second promotion is open until September 15, for a return to mid-October.

The establishment is also enriched by a training in the trades of production, and will host within it a "school of art and image" directed by JR, also a member of the collective Kourtrajme (Romain Gavras, Kim Chapiron .. .), whose courses will begin in January.

A return to the roots for the one who "decided to be an artist" in Bosquets, city of Montfermeil where lives and grew up his sidekick Ladj Ly, as recalled to AFP his former producer, Emile Abinal.

This school in the school run by JR, himself self-taught, aims to "train twelve student artists who are outside the radars of Parisian art schools and give them the tricks of the trade," says Emile Abinal, who is currently building this project.

Ladj Ly and JR started their career together in 2004, with monumental wild collages on the leprous facades of the city of Bosquets. They then co-directed several documentaries on this deprived and isolated neighborhood.

A two-time Cesar nominee in 2018, in the documentary and short film categories, Ladj Ly dreamed for twenty years of opening a film school in the neighborhood where he grew up and started as a director by filming the urban violence of 2005, born down from his house.

"Five short films made by the students of the first promotion will be presented in festivals, two feature films are already produced, it's concrete," he said. His first feature film awarded in Cannes, "Les miserables", will be released on November 29th.

© 2019 AFP