Little Jaffna trailer: “It’s going to fart in color, it’s going to be pop!”

Lawrence Valin signs her first long, a Franco-Tamoul infiltration thriller. Here are the first images of this film with crazy vitality.

The district of “Little Jaffna” in Paris is the heart of a vibrant Tamil community, where Michael, a young police officer, is responsible for infiltrating a criminal group known for extortion and money laundering for the benefit of separatist rebels in Sri Lanka. But as it sink at the heart of the organization, its loyalty will be put to the test, in an implacable pursuit against one of the most hidden and powerful gangs in Paris.

At the end of the month will come out Little Jaffnaa first long which manages to mix genres and references with dynamism. Lawrence Valinhis co-scriptwriter, director and main actor, has gone around festivals with this story of double Franco-Tamoule identity. Met in Sarlat, where he came to present him to an audience of high school students, he gave us his influences, he who was as much marked by the cinema of Kollywood (the Bollywood of Sri-Lanka),) as by the infiltration and/or mafia films of Martin Scorse (Infiltrated in mind) or James Gray (The night belongs to us).

To support the broadcasting of this colorful trailer, focus on this choice to offer a pop vision of a little-known community in the cinema.

“I love Harmony Korine’s films, whether it is Spring Breakers, The Beach Bum or even Gummo, first confides us Lawrence Valin. This film is how I imagined it, even if in reality, there is no Tamil that is dressed as colorful. I had all the more desire for a gangster film, where we say to ourselves: ‘Oh, it’s going to be dark.’ No, there, it will fart in color, it will be pop! When you are in the church with all the traditional outfits and everything, I said to myself: ‘It’s cool, it will work.’ I was answered: ‘But … it’s not scary enough?’. But if, if we believe in our characters, it can be colorful and threatening in the same place. “

“The same with the roof scene, he continues. We talked about his violence, and normally, this kind of sequence, we would do it in the night, in an abandoned, hidden corner. There, we turn in the open air, there are sounds of birds … Since I have not seen that before, in my imagination, suddenly, it becomes true for me, I say to myself: ‘It’s peaceful, it’s spring, the weather is nice …’ And at the same time it freezes my blood everything that happens. This is what creates strong images, when you take up a very codified thing from the cinema, but you treat it in a different way.“”

“I was told a lot: ‘Ah, it reminds us of Scorsese or Tarantino.’ Because it’s a bit crossed out? For the emergence of violence ?, he wonders. Infiltratedfrom Martin Scorsese, had an undeniable influence. With The night belongs to usfrom James Gray, these are the two films that have the most accompanied me in writing. This work is a whole odyssey, the epic of a guy that one follows from an instant T, and all the adventure that is behind. “

The trailer highlights the thriller/infiltration aspect than humor, yet very present in Little Jaffna. Sometimes even at times when the spectator will expect the least.

“I told myself that mixing the effects, it will create my own universe, Explicit Valin. This is what I tried to do with this film, in any case. It’s complicated for a director who can say: ‘It’s my universe.’ Now we can say: ‘It’s Wes Anderson’ And everyone knows what we are talking about, but for the moment, I have made only one film, there is no other reference. You could say to ourselves: ‘It’s bollywood’but in reality, it’s a little different. And that’s what’s interesting. During the film, the spectator can say to himself: ‘Ok, I’m starting to have the codes’, And this is possible by decrypting southern cinema while mixing it with Western cinema. We talked about James Gray, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino … But there is also the influence of Korean films, which mix so many genres and have influenced me a lot. Bong Joon-Ho’s films are a great example. When I see parasitic, I cannot classify it, it mixes too many things. There is a bit of that in Little Jaffna. “

Little Jaffna will be released in the cinema on April 30. The full interview of its creator will be read on Premiere.fr at that time.