The Bellishas, mother and son, both live in a small apartment in a suburb whose name is never specified, but where the towers set the scene. He is 27 years old; she is ill, and very distressed by their situation as the last Jews in the city. She wants to leave, to flee anti-Semitism like the others have already done… Next year in Saint-Mandé? His son, a sort of Charlie Chaplin from working-class neighborhoods, crosses this twilight with a casualness full of grace. His wanderings are peppered with things seen. The “Free Palestine” poster which hangs in the office of a local elected official, who absolutely wants to organize a “photo op” with Bellisha to demonstrate that there is no problem of anti-Semitism in his city. A tête-à-tête with a young man who came to take refuge in his living room to escape the police – “I don’t like Jews. Apart from you, who is the only one I know. Oh, no, I also know another one, in football. I like him too.” The tags. The targeted burglaries. But also the nostalgia for a vanishing world, the outpourings of solidarity, and the neighborhood pastries. Written and shot before October 7, The Last of the Jews captures something of the time that no documentary work can reproduce with such accuracy.
L’Express: How did the idea for this film come to you?
Noé Debré: This is a shot in a German short film – Masel Tov Cocktail – which was the trigger. The scenario has nothing to do with that of my film, but by simply seeing the image of a Jewish character in the middle of a neighborhood with towers, I said to myself that the story of Jews in working-class neighborhoods is not had not been told. When artistic representation lags behind reality, there is a film to be made…
On the question of the relationship between art and politics, the writer Nicolas Mathieu told us: “In society, everyone uses words, and speeches hide everything. And then there are people with affects, a sensitivity, which attempt a work of demystification.” Is there something of this nature in your approach?
Yes, there is that. This ties in with the words of another writer I love very much, Philip Roth. In I married a communist, he makes one of his characters say: “When we generalize suffering, we have communism. When we particularize suffering, we have literature.” In my opinion, cinema must seek the same thing. Leaving the general case to enter into the particular: we discover all the nuances of individual experience. As a screenwriter and director, I am not in a political or generalist approach – even that of “going against clichés”, or “breaking taboos”, as I am sometimes complimented. I only aspire to tell.
How did you work on this film ?
I read a lot of newspapers, but in this case, they are not a good source for artistic research: a journalist already has his script, and I am supposed to write mine. On the other hand, with a friend, Elie Benchimol, we went to Pierrefitte, Bagnolet, Saint-Denis, Stains… We met locals there, with whom we spoke at length. They sometimes told us things of extraordinary depth without realizing it.
For example ?
I asked one of these residents, a sales representative in heat pumps, if he ever said that he was Jewish when customers asked him where he came from – which is quite common, when we has a fairly typical physique. He replied: “If I’m asked, I’ll say it without hesitation. As if it were completely natural. If it’s not a problem for you to say it, it won’t be a problem for them to hear it.” I find that it says a lot about how people manage everyday life in a very fine manner. Another thing that struck me was this family to whom neighbors said: “You must not leave, because it is when there are no more Jews that people will become really racist .” This is all in the film. I set a rule for myself that everything that would be in The Last of the Jews would relate to things that I have been told, or at least that I have read.
You wrote and directed the film well before October 7 and the explosion of anti-Semitic acts that followed…
I was surprised to see that some people still seemed to discover the reality of anti-Semitism in France. Of course, there was a surge in action for several weeks, but, in truth, things have been like this for twenty years. For several years, the phenomenon was completely ignored. The most traumatic in this regard being the killing of Mohammed Merah at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse. The indifference with which the anti-Semitic murder of three children was absorbed at the time made me shake on my feet. The absurd “lone wolf” theory held sway. And in the demonstration in reaction to this abomination, there were only Jews and Israeli flags. This upset me. But since then, I find that there has been an awareness. Maybe it’s from January 2015. People said to themselves: Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher is the same thing. In any case, politically, things have changed. The way in which anti-Semitic acts are covered in public debate – including in the media that “bobos” like me read and listen to – seems much more enlightened to me. Look at what the Anglo-Saxons are experiencing today: they are late in this awareness.
Was the film’s release date already set for January 24?
Yes, and we very quickly ruled out the idea of postponing the release date. The question would have arisen if there had been fear of misunderstandings. That is to say, if what was happening in the world and in France colored the film in a way that was not that of its original purpose. However, it is not the case. On the contrary. We came to an agreement, in particular with Agnès Jaoui, who experienced the events in an even more painful way. [NDLR : l’actrice a perdu deux membres de sa famille dans le pogrom du 7 octobre, et trois autres ont été pris en otage], on the fact that some of the French precisely needed an object with which they could identify, and around which to gather. And that, perhaps, the film could be that.
Did the title raise any questions?
Yes, some operators asked us: “But… are you going to keep this title?” Here too, we were quite sure of ourselves.
What were they scared of ?
Good question… which I asked, really, without provocation to the distributors: “What’s the problem with the title?” No one could answer. I think there is a somewhat abstract excitement around these questions.
Anti-Semitism in the suburbs remains taboo for part of the left, which sees in its denunciation a stigmatization of Muslims or a way of pitting the French against each other. During the whole process, did you have to confront this discomfort?
Honestly, not so much. I expected more. This film was born at a time when the reality of what I describe is no longer questioned except by a minority fringe of the left. In any case, in the process of making the film, no one seemed to bat an eyelid, from the people I submitted the script to to those who financed or distributed the film. I can not complain. That being said, it is true that the subject causes excitement. We asked ourselves questions, including within the team. For example, there is this electrician character who, as soon as he sees the mezuzah at the entrance to the Bellisha apartment, refuses to go in to repair it. The question arose: what face do we give it? There would have been intellectual or political comfort in saying “well there you go, he’s a Frenchman” rather than someone of North African origin as in the film. But that would have been crazy hypocrisy. It was impossible.
Is it intimidating to write about these topics? Do we keep in mind the criticisms, the misunderstandings, the recoveries? Because, in the press, this is sometimes the case…
I believe that we are not subject to the same criteria. In art, as long as the result is good, the scope of possibility is much wider – unlike journalism, where you are not redeemed by the quality of the work. Just look at Clint Eastwood. Or, closer, Blanche Gardin, Riad Sattouf… Their freedom is crazy, because no one can deny their talent.
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