"VS", an immersion in the punchline ring

Tackle the prestige of 8 mile (2003), Curtis Hanson's film inspired by Eminem's journey into the world of rap battles, it had to be done! Writer and director, the British Ed Lilly did not hesitate to take up the challenge by proposing a fiction on these verbal contests which structured American hip-hop, French but also English.

Awarded at the Dinard British Film Festival for his screenplay, VS, finally available in France on VOD, recounts the rise of a young Englishman, Adam, a lively teenager who goes from foster family to host family and finds an outlet for his violent impulses in these evenings where aspiring rappers confront each other.

"The world of battles has changed a lot since the early 2000s. They are less improvised, more written and sometimes there is also music. "Ed Lilly, director of" VS "

Like Eminem, Adam resented his mother, who abandoned him at the age of 5. For Ed Lilly, the comparison stops there: "First of all, the structure of our story is different, it's more like a film like Karate Kid or Rocky than a biopic. And then the world of battles has changed a lot since the early 2000s. They are less improvised, more written and sometimes there is also music. And above all, there are not that many battles in 8 Mile : there is one at the beginning and another at the end. In our film, there are many more. "

Here, Adam, played by Connor Swindells, who made himself known with the series Sex Education, climbs very (too) quickly in the hierarchy of battles. The idea came to him when he caught his nose with the cashier of the video game room he frequented. Battles organizer Makayla initiates him, coaches him and becomes his muse. Only she is the ex of the defending champion Slaughter. Adam quickly becomes the MC to shoot. In addition to mastering multisyllabic rhymes, metaphors and punchlines, the young man will have to learn to use the weapons of his opponents: humiliation and the exploitation of their most intimate secrets, at the risk of appearing gujat or homophobic.

Ed Lilly took his time to study this scene before embarking on filming: "I started working on the film in 2012, says the director. With my co-author, Daniel Hayes, we were looking for projects, and both fans of battles. I was already working with musicians and making music videos for Shotty Horroh, who plays Slaughter in the film, and who, in the meantime, has become a battle champion, one of the best in the world. There had not yet been a film in England on rap battles, something positive that touches the youth of our country, and which shows its diversity, its intelligence and its creativity. "

Police claimed form

By the time he started writing his screenplay, clubs and concert halls in London had yet to complete form 696, claimed by the police. Although reformed in 2009 and abandoned in November 2017, the form asked room owners to stipulate the style of music that was going to be played, the target audience, even the ethnic group, at the risk of being refused authorization to organize an evening.

Raves grime, a stream of English rap, are obviously the first victims of these cancellations, hence the work done by Makayla, in the film, to keep the atmosphere of the battles as calm as possible for the public. "When we started writing, remembers Ed Lilly, we went to a lot of battles. We warned the participants, they knew we were going to make a film but they were so focused on what they were doing that they really didn't care. I also took the actors to events in Birmingham and the technical crew in London. I wanted to show them the reality of what we were shooting. "