New York (AFP)

Fourteen years after the last episode of the cult TV series The Sopranos, the film retracing the youthful years of the future mafia boss "Tony" premiered Wednesday evening in New York, in front of a excited audience of fans won over to the advance.

The Beacon Theater, a performance hall transformed into a giant cinema, took on the appearance of a stadium when David Chase, creator of the series, who co-wrote the film, introduced the cast of "The many saints of Newark".

And the applause redoubled for Michael Gandolfini, the son of James Gandolfini, who died in 2013 at the age of 51, and who played Tony Soprano, violent leader of an Italian-American mafia clan but tormented family man, in the HBO series which has marked the TV of the 2000s and was a real social phenomenon in the United States.

"We miss your father !!!" shouted a spectator.

In the film, 22-year-old Michael Gandolfini himself plays a teenage Tony Soprano in 1960s New Jersey.

"I didn't know if Michael really wanted to do it, it could be too much for him," director Alan Taylor told AFP on the sidelines of the screening as part of the Tribeca film festival.

"But he showed it in an audition, and I never doubted again. I just had to sometimes prevent him from being + too + his father," because in the movie, "he had to be that version. young and tender of the character, ”added Alan Taylor, already behind the camera for several episodes of the series at the 21 Emmy Awards and five Golden Globes.

The creator of the Sopranos, David Chase, on September 22, at the premiere of the film "The Many Saints of Newark" at the Beacon Theater in New York Angela Weiss AFP

- final rebound -

If it traces the youthful years of Tony, a gifted teenager but without benchmarks, between an absent father and an overly severe mother, the film centers on a character he venerates, Dickie Moltisanti, played by Alessandro Nivola.

The story also explores the tensions between the Italian-American and African-American communities in then-New Jersey, as well as the Newark riots of 1967 and police violence.

But like any self-respecting prequel, "The many saints (" molti santi "in Italian) of Newark", multiplies the references to the series and delivers some keys to fans who have mastered the genealogy of the Sopranos at their fingertips.

"I saw the series maybe six or seven times, and it really lived up to my expectations," said after the screening Robert Quinn, 23, still blown away by the final twist.

“I grew up in New Jersey, where you really hear people talking like that,” he added, saying he identified “a lot” with the show.

Broadcast in the United States simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max from October 1, the film will be released this week in the United Kingdom and in early November in France.

© 2021 AFP