Pierre Niney guest editor of Première: he comments on the new formula and confides in Gourou

Première magazine will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year. The opportunity to get a makeover under the watchful eye of Pierre Niney, who is making his comeback this week, two years after the Monte Cristo hit.

The new First is on newsstands. and this month we are inaugurating a new formula which puts cinema at the center of everything: a critical notebook placed at the opening, longer and less formatted interviews, and the arrival of new meetings, including a meeting with Jean-Pascal Zadi and Raphaël Quenard in front of students from the EICAR school.

A way to breathe new life, perspective and conversation into a magazine that intends to rethink its way of talking about films.

To support this development, Pierre Niney agreed to take on the role of guest editor-in-chief. We asked him to react to the new editorial choices and his reactions speak volumes.

On the new positioning of criticism, he confides:

“Giving back a space where we can really talk about a work is essential. In the current immediacy, everything becomes terse. Nuance, context, depth: we need it.“

On the magazine’s desire to escape the shackles of press junkets, he speaks as an expert: “On some films, I spent ten hours locked in a hotel room with journalists who all asked me the same questions.”

And in fact, he welcomes the arrival of new formats like our “facing the reader”: “Readers’ questions reshuffle the cards. It breaks the routine and brings unexpected angles.“

But Pierre Niney is also at the heart of the issue, since First devotes a long interview to him. On the menu: Guruthe societal thriller that he co-produced and in which he plays a charismatic coach caught up in his own influence. An intense role in which he engages without filter.

He first tells how the idea came about:

“I saw the explosion of self-proclaimed coaches on the networks, people ready to pay 4,000 euros for three days of seminar… I saw an incredible movie character there.“

In GuruNiney explores this moment when speech becomes power, when the speaker falls in love with his own speech. Not a cynic, but someone who begins by sincerely believing that he is helping people – before the mechanism turns around.

He details his work with Yann Gozlan, with whom he forms one of the most stimulating duos in French cinema: “Nothing is more fun than growing up with a director. With Yann, we were constantly looking for the sweet spot between empathy and discomfort. We wanted the viewer to oscillate: ‘I understand this guy‘… Then ‘What a manipulator‘, then again ‘He touches me‘.“

A character in permanent imbalance, nourished by seminar scenes where the actor had to accept losing control: “We shot very different versions, from total show to minimalism. We had to navigate ambiguity. Sometimes I let go completely, sometimes I stayed extremely focused. We could have made another film just with the variations.“

Guru is also a political film – without being a manifesto: “The film questions our desire to believe. We all need stories. It can be beautiful… or dangerous.”

The interview also returns to his relationship to the game (which ranges from unbridled comedy to the darkest drama), to technique, to fame, to responsibility and to this blurred border between truth and narration – which is the heart of this very intriguing film.