13/10/2023 - The director of Lost Illusions, along with Frederic Planchon, co-directed the series based on the book of the same title by journalist Fabrice Arfi and starring Vincent Lindon

This week French filmmaker Xavier Giannoli visited Cadiz and its new South International Series Festival to present his latest work after its world premiere in Venice, the series Of Money and Blood [+see also:
interview: Xavier Giannoli
series profile]. Directed with Frederic Planchon, it is inspired by the book of the same name by investigative journalist Fabrice Arfi and stars Vincent Lindon, Niels Schneider, Ramzy Bedia and Olga Kurylenko, among others.

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Cineuropa: What does the first episode, screened here, set out?
Xavier Giannoli: There are 12 episodes and it all starts with a small detail; from there, an investigation is carried out, like in a thriller, and we end up discovering a colossal story about some small-time fraudsters who stole 5 billion euros in six months.

What attracted you to this real case?
It’s the biggest scam in history. Nobody knew and nobody wants to know today, especially the government, how much money was stolen. It was a mystery. How a bunch of small-time crooks managed to steal so much money, and how this questions us, what it tells us about a certain situation in politics, about the fight against pollution, about greed, about capitalism and, above all, about human nature.

Did these small crooks slip through the cracks in the system?
They weren’t cracks, but an entire cave. Following this fraud, the government asked for a report to be drafted to understand what had happened, but it’s as if the carbon market had been a financial field with no scrutiny.

It is ecology, which is considered sacred, that is used for material gain in the series. A massive contradiction!
I like your use of the word sacred because, although it is a prosecutor doing the investigation, he’s not relying on the Torah or the Bible, but on the criminal code. He’s a man with a certain dignity who is asking himself what values we still have and what we can still believe in. He’s someone in search of good and evil, and at the same time of the social and religious dimension of these ideas.

Does this social portrait connect in any way to your previous film Lost Illusions [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Xavier Giannoli
film profile]?
Yes, the same phrase appears in both films, which is heard in the first episode of Of Money and Blood: "economic liberalism is the freedom of the fox in the henhouse". When I read about this real event in the newspapers, they were talking about the carbon mafia and The Godfather is the quintessential mafia film, based on Mario Puzo's novel. Studying the obsession with greed and money reveals something about the human soul, as the most beautiful family, social, political, ecological values are put to the test against a deadly obsession with profit.

So, there is nothing sacred left in this rampant neoliberalism/capitalism?
Nothing, just profit. But mind you, I am by no means illiberal, what worries me is that something in human nature often ends up spoiling the most beautiful things, such as forests. As in the beginning of Martin Scorsese's masterpiece Casino, when Robert De Niro is talking about Las Vegas, he says that we’ve been given paradise and we’ve screwed it up. I’m concerned and fascinated by this decadence, and at the same time I’m outraged as a citizen.

You didn't want to make a documentary about a real event but a fiction, but have you been faithful to the original book or have you changed anything?
I’m not interested in the events, but in the shadow of the events. My job as screenwriter and director is to film the effects that the book suggests.

Why co-direct this series and how did you split this up with Frederic Planchon?
At the beginning it was just me and I realised that it was a tremendous project, because we were shooting for a year. I couldn't think of any other co-director than him, and he also has an extraordinary eye.

Shooting series or filming movies: What differences did you find?
Thanks to StudioCanal I’ve been able to shoot this series as if it had been a film, with my usual crew, the same as for Lost Illusions. For me it was like shooting a very long film, but with episodes. And the original book was so good that it naturally had the pace of a series. I shot it like a film, it's a series with soul.

Will you continue to be involved in the series?
If this is successful, perhaps.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)