This Sunday evening, the film Police will be broadcast on France 2. A film which required very precise preparation for Anne Fontaine, the director, who wanted her feature film to be as realistic as possible.
This Sunday, January 8 on France 2, Police will air at 9:05 p.m. A film released in 2020 which stars Omar Sy, Virginie Efira as well as Grégory Gadebois. In Police, they respectively interpret Virginie, Erik and Aristide, three Parisian cops who must carry out an unusual mission: to escort a foreigner to the border. But on the way to the airport, Virginie learns that the man in question risks death by returning to his country, Tajikistan. She then tries to convince her two colleagues to let him escape. But they don’t necessarily agree with Virginie’s project, which will do everything to make it happen.
The director went to meet a refugee
Anne Fontaine, the director, wanted her film to best reflect reality. She therefore went to meet several police officers, one of whom taught her how to shoot. Anne Fontaine also spent a lot of time with the border police. “It was essential work to clarify the characters, give credibility to their actions and make the veracity of this profession”, she explained. But that’s not all ! The filmmaker also met a refugee in Vincennes, a week before her departure. She remembers : “‘I’ll find you a lawyer’, I told him. The three police officers attending the interview, one of whom, a sort of Erik, bumped into me: ‘Wait ! You still don’t believe what he tells you?’ I felt his two colleagues uncomfortable: they were clearly asking questions. Who to believe? (…) It was impressive and, whatever it was, it was clearly about someone who was going straight for the worst misery.
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An indoor shoot
For the realization of Police, Anne Fontaine favored shooting indoors. The scenes were mostly filmed in a car and in the studio. A way to save time, since shooting outdoors would have lasted much longer. For Anne Fontaine, it was also the best way to capture the characters’ faces so closely. “I would not have had such stylized frames, nor could I have afforded certain traveling shots. The police station has also been completely recreated”she explained.
Article written with the collaboration of 6Medias.
