“After the flood”: the risky bet of Mara Joly

UPDATE DAY

With very established actors in his team, such as France Castel, Marilyse Bourke, Stéphane Demers, Jean-Moïse Martin or Martin Larocque, assigning four of his first roles to new faces was a risky, ambitious bet , but necessary.

The screenwriter, director and producer of the series Après le déluge, Mara Joly, was determined to shine a light on lesser-known talents, from diversity, and above all to do it the right way, in front of and behind the camera.

The idea was to create an alloy between experience and a breath of fresh air, without it being “filling”, she explained in an interview on the set of the rue Notre-Dame, in Montreal. Whatever their origins, its actors have interesting things to say and come out of the boxes in which they are usually found. On top of all that, they “are lit for their beauty, styled and made up for their beauty, dressed for their beauty, and highlighted for real,” she clarified.

Après le déluge features an empathetic and involved police officer who decides to take four young delinquents under her wing by introducing them to mixed martial arts (MMA) to avoid a criminal record. A decision, which we suspect, is not unanimous in the entourage of the latter, embodied by Penade Estime (Les jeunes loups, District 31), who has notably evolved in the United States as a stuntwoman in recent years.

A narrative frame inspired by the story of Montreal policeman Evens Guercy, who founded the boxing club of Hope in the Saint-Michel district, in Montreal, to provide an alternative to juvenile delinquency.

“To be the door”

Having grown up with the burden of being 'white passing', being perceived as a white person – and receiving special treatment because of the color of her skin – while growing up in Senegal, Ghana , in South Africa and France, with an Afro-descendant mother, the culture, the entourage and the referents; Mara Joly was built with the desire “to be a door at some point” for representativeness.

“When I came back to Quebec around 15-16 years old, I felt a discrepancy between how I felt and my environment. I arrived in the middle [artistic] and I felt a gap between what I am, how I feel and what I saw or what I played,” she said.

Uncomfortable to feel that she had many more privileges than other people with the same origins as them, the author wanted to put her privileges to good use. “I can use them instead of finding it unfair and difficult. Maybe I can use them to bring some voices to fruition. Maybe it's for something that I'm “white passing”, “she added.

Declined in six one-hour episodes, the series After the deluge< /em> promises stories of family, romance and light after the high tide has passed and buried treasures resurface.