France

Synopsis

Samba came to France ten years ago from Senegal. He plugs away at various lowly jobs. Alice is a senior executive who has recently undergone a burnout. He is willing to do whatever it takes to get working papers, while she is trying to get her life back together by doing volunteer work in an association. Both struggle to get out of the dead-ends of their lives ... until fate draws them together. Juggling humour and emotion, their story leads them on a new path to happiness. What if life had more imagination than either of them ?

Director's Statement

After having focused on today’s working classes in THE INTOUCHABLES, we this time wanted to shed a light on people who live in the underground, often after having crossed the ocean and braved the worst difficulty to come to France.

Our point is not to take a stand about the situation of illegal immigrants, neither in a political nor a biased way, but to observe, to state and question how things are, like it is possible in the cinematic form.

The idea to intertwine a person like Alice, who is recovering from a burnout, with Samba allows two lonely souls to meet each other, one representing the Western dream and the other one the new illness that is symptomatic of modern societies.

We absolutely do not want to give a negative or pessimistic view of things; we keep the tone of the comedy and the absurd and at the same time a great tenderness for our characters who, like on a stage, are constrained to disguise and to change their identity depending on the situations.

The extraordinary destiny of those migrants who are prepared to do everything to reach the West makes them modern heroes, funny and sensitive at the same time. A comedy nurtured by authentic situations - that is the path we try to follow in every film. SAMBA corresponds to this approach.
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Cast & Crew

Directed by: Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache

Written by: Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache

Produced by: Nicolas Duval Adassovsky, Yann Zenou, Laurent Zeitoun

Cinematography: Stéphane Fontaine

Cast: Omar Sy (Samba), Charlotte Gainsbourg (Alice), Tahar Rahim (Wilson), Izïa Higelin (Manu), Issaka Sawadogo (Jonas), Hélène Vincent (Marcelle), Christiane Millet (Madeleine)

Nominations and Awards

  • People's Choice Award 2015