"Zonz," a little gem of a series to watch on France.tv

Yet another prison series? Prison Break, Oz, Orange is the new Black, Escape at Dannemora, Rectify, Alcatraz ... Fiction has already dealt with the subject extensively, so what new additions could Zonz by Marine Maugrain-Legagneur, Quentin Pissot, and Alicia Pratx bring to the table? Well, everything. Or almost. Presented alongside Canneseries, the series, available on France.tv and Slash, is what we call a gem. A fiction whose central theme is a group of teenagers locked up in a juvenile detention center, and whose contours Alice (Mona Claude) gradually discovers. Around her, young prisoners played by brilliant and sparkling actors (Roman Doduik, Adem Benosmane, Bilel Chegrani, Hind Faiz, Nelligan, Mohamed Cissé and Raoul Denez) but also a plethora of guests who embody the management of the establishment and the prison guards: Camille Chamoux, Fauve Hautot, Carla Poquin, Jean-Claude Muaka, Nicole Ferroni, Tiphaine Daviot and Chad Zem.

Filmed in the prison where Guy Georges was housed

To stick as closely as possible to reality, the series was filmed in the former Clairvaux prison in the Aube region, which closed in 2023. A prison that once held inmates such as Carlos, the terrorist, not the singer, Michel Ardouin, Guy Georges, Patrick Salameh, and Youssouf Fofana of the Barbarians gang. "When we were among ourselves, the gloomy atmosphere of the prison faded a little," Mona Claude recalls. "And after ten days of filming, we no longer really considered the fact that we were in a real prison; we had forgotten about the walls." "We were in Guy Georges' prison," explains Bilel Chegrani. "It chills you to the bone at first when you think about it coldly. It was a place for long sentences, to soak up a certain atmosphere; there's no better setting."

On paper, the project is bold. Risky. Sometimes risky. Yet, the young actors throw themselves into it without stress. Mona Claude: "I was touched by my character. I like the message she sends; she has a kind of violence that she inflicts on herself in the name of an illusory perfection. She carries an immense weight on her shoulders. She's like a child who believes in a fairy tale; she's almost naive. And when she meets the other inmates and confronts the complexity of reality, she realizes that the people she imagined as guilty are just human beings, worthy of love, understanding, and respect. I think she highlights a silent struggle, that of the gap people have between the image they might have of an incarcerated person and reality."

Bilel Chegrani, who plays Killian, has a slightly different take on his character. "He's a bit like me," the young actor confesses. "He's jovial, quite sunny, he's a little kitten trapped in a very harsh world. And besides that, he has family pressure, which leads me to seek out several feelings in him. I really liked the tone of the series, with a lot of humor, it's a change from the dark, violent, and very somber prison series. It's a series that's both light and complex."

A residence to create team spirit

To create a real sense of osmosis within the young cast, everyone went on a weekend residency to get to know each other. Between two readings of the script, the group plays games and builds a bond to create a truly unique family. "We each have such a different and unique personality that, when we're all together, it actually creates a kind of explosive cocktail," Mona Claude emphasizes. "There's a beautiful mix that creates a bit of a clash of identities."

The series could have fallen into the caricature of prison creation with violence as a common thread. Without avoiding it, Zonz finds the subtle way to approach other themes like love, reintegration, family ties, friendship, hope. "We see pure and hard violence that we could imagine in a prison environment but there are also these little twigs of sweetness that we can come across in the series that resemble real life" , concludes Bilel Chegrani.

, available on France.tv and Slash.