Director

Emmanuel Courcol

France | 2020 | 107 min | French

• Producer Marc Bordure, Robert Guédiguian
• Production Company Agat Films & Cie
• Screenplay Emmanuel Courcol, Thierry de Carbonnières
• Cinematography Yann Maritaud
• Editing Guerric Catala
• Sound Ludovic Giraud, Juliette Thibault, Sylvain Yonnet Liberty
• Cast Kad Merad, Marina Hands, Laurent Stocker, Wabinlé Nabié, Sofian Khammes, David Ayala, Pierre Lottin, Lamine Cissokho, Alexandre Medvedev, Saïd Benchnafa
• Contacts

  Mk2 Films

  intlsales@mk2.com

About the Film

The Big Hit, starring Kad Merad, is Emmanuel Courcol’s second feature film. After a prolific stage and screen career, he turned to screenwriting and now brings us an uplifting comedy inspired by true events.

Etienne (Kad Merad), an often out-of-work but endearing actor, runs a theater workshop in a prison, where he brings together an unlikely troupe of prisoners to stage Samuel Beckett’s famous play Waiting for Godot. Etienne understands that he can lose control quickly, but he imposes himself with authority and passion. When he is allowed to take the colorful band of convicts—played by a powerful acting ensemble—on a tour outside of prison, Etienne finally has the chance to thrive. Each date is a new success and there is a growing relationship between this ad hoc group of actors and their director. But soon comes the final performance in Paris. Will their last night together be the biggest hit of them all?

Throughout the film, we feel all the emotional, comic and dramatic potential of this band of prisoners, “light years away from Beckett” as Etienne says in the film, but much closer than one could imagine from the universe of Waiting for Godot. The dynamic camera work is light and fluid—focusing on the faces of Etienne and the inmates—attentive, and waiting for moments of surprises and revelation in the narrow spaces of the rehearsals.

Theatre scenes answer to the closed universe of prison, giving an escape; an urban and rural perspective in which they share with us the vertigo the prisoners experience on the outside. This vertigo, also present in Beckett's work, demonstrates the absurdity of existence, expressed all the more strongly in the universe of the prison.

The Big Hit is not just a joyful comedy; it is also a social and societal analysis in the spirit of Samuel Beckett, in which the director calls into question the necessity of confinement and demonstrates the liberating power of culture.

Nicole Guillemet