Alexandre Perrier and François-Pierre Clavel’s Bordeaux-based production outfit Kidam, which produced last year’s Cannes Critics’ Week prize winner “Zero F***s Given,” has boarded “Life Ahead…
“Life Ahead” tells the story of Jahia, a 16-year-old Eritrean girl who lives in an asylum center in Belgium, where her dim prospects for the future cast a shadow over her life. Then she meets the feisty and spirited Nèta, a young Moldavian girl, who drags Jahia along with her crazy energy.
His research led him to the welcome centers for asylum seekers scattered throughout the country. It was a slow process of gaining the trust of the residents he met. “The situation is difficult for them. At first, they are not so eager to speak,” he said. “But step by step, I could connect with them.”
“I was always more interested in people who are at the first glance very different from me, but when you dig, you feel how [you are] connected and how both of you are human,” he said. “In the end, I look at it not by the way of [our differences] but what we have in common.” Lemaire said she was drawn to the project by a sense of shared sensibilities with Meys, partly due to a common background in documentary filmmaking. “I think we have the same care of telling something precise and true about the world we’re living in,” she said. “I saw his first feature and I was really struck by the cinematic quality of it, and also this very precise, subtle way of portraying his characters.