Related Images | “L’avance” on Notebook

Related Images invites readers behind the scenes and into the sketchbooks of working filmmakers to learn more about their creative processes.

Djiby Kebe’s L’avance is now showing exclusively on MUBI.

L'argent (Robert Bresson, 1983).

Money has always been really important to me. I grew up listening to rap music, and I learned English by studying the lyrics. I noticed that the rappers I was a fan of talked about money as if it were an end in itself. This philosophy had a huge impact on me throughout my life.

Thanks to movies, I also realized that money can be dangerous and destroy you. I’ve always been a huge fan of American cinema, and at some point, I noticed that all the characters I loved shared one particular trait: they all wanted to be financially free no matter what, because that’s how the country is built.

One of the things that made me fall in love with those films is that I relate to these characters. Nightfall (1956) by Jacques Tourneur is one of my favorites. Every time I see Aldo Ray watching the bag full of money lost by the gangsters, I ask myself: What would I do if I were him? Go to the police or keep it for myself? I could also see those characters in neorealist films. Il bidone (1955) by Fellini was a huge inspiration while I was making L'avance, which follows a painter who wants to live off his art.

Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur, 1956).

Il bidone (Federico Fellini, 1955).

In 2021, I went to art school and started to become friends with a lot of artists, especially painters. I was intrigued by them and their relationship with their work. I respect the fact that they sell a part of themselves. It’s hard, but they have to because that’s the only way for them to live off their art.

The starting point of the film was just to follow someone who sells a painting that represents his dead mom. Quickly, I saw that the script was about a lot of other things, like racism and sociology, which I didn’t want to explore at first because they are big themes, and I think it’s hard to make a good film based on big themes. But I saw that everything I had written made sense because it came organically.

One of the ideas was to show a character who carries money with him in a city. It sounds simple, but it was important to me. In Le franc (1994) by Djibril Diop Mambéty, the main character walks in Dakar with a winning lottery ticket stuck to a door. It’s really moving because, as the audience, we feel his struggle. Walking with that door is difficult, and he’s tired. Money has so much weight in his life. One of the other references was obviously L’argent by Robert Bresson, as we follow the money through Paris.