More than 20 years after the success of 3 Zéros which brought together 1,252,127 people at the box office in 2002, director Fabien Onteniente had promised to produce the sequel to this comedy which had found its audience by recounting the behind the scenes of football business through the explosion of a young gem from the Parisian suburbs released from prison. Indeed, the official trailer for the film 4 Zeros wasted no time in setting social networks alight. Some actors present in the first opus have been renewed, notably Gérard Lanvin in the role of agent Alain Colonna and Isabelle Nanty in that of his sister Sylvie Colonna. The scenario for this new opus is as follows: Sylvie Colonna, president of the Haricots d’Arpajon football club, has rebuilt her life with José Pinto. Together, they run a Portuguese restaurant in Pontault-Combault: Churrasco. But business is bad. Their son, Manu, a slightly lost thirty-year-old, dreams of becoming a player’s agent. One day, he discovers a nugget: Kidane, a young prodigy from the Comoros who sets fire during the skylight challenge. But other agents are already lurking around… The Pintos see in Kidane the hope of getting out of trouble and decide to call for help, Alain Colonna who is living a quiet retirement in Tahiti. But football has changed… All together, they will have to face DZ, the most influential agent in the business, a man with a long arm and a bad reputation… With the aim of allowing Kidane to join the club of his dreams : PSG.
A realism of the transfer window and the world of agents
During the last international break, Didier Deschamps’ Blues were able to attend a private session and director Fabien Onteniente received very good feedback regarding the realism of the transfer window world – a period always feared among certain players and in certain clubs. In the film, several themes are highlighted such as hidden clauses in contracts at the time of transfers, exorbitant agent commissions or even the phenomenon of small players sent to the four corners of the world by their respective agents to facilitate other larger transactions:we screened the film at Clairefontaine and all the players had a great time because they already knew this madness, so it gave me a kind of stamp of validity and since 3 Zeros, I haven’t really given up because I made a lot of friends with 3 Zeros who liked it, for whom the film is cult. I like making shows, I am regularly invited to talk about football on different channels and then I am interested, but there was an agent who helped me specifically, called Karim Djaziri who is the one of Benzema’s agents. He guided me with the different readings I did so that the film was credible. I didn’t want it to be fake. We can’t afford it with football, even in the game», Tells us Fabien Onteniente.
So to stick as closely as possible to reality, Fabien Onteniente did not hesitate to ask advice from direct players in football like Karim Djaziri, Rai or even journalists working in the field: “there have been visual shocks during these 20 years. When I made 3 Zeros, I met Antoine Kombouaré who was coach of the Paris Saint-Germain reserve team. It was Luis Fernandez the coach of the main team. And I kept emotional ties with Antoine and I followed him everywhere, to Dijon and Lens. One day, I slept at the La Gaillette training center in Lens and one morning, I went down the stairs and I saw parents with the children and Antoine explained to me that all these parents, they come and they are convinced that they have the future nugget. Now in football, since 3 Zeros, there are so many sorrels so the parents come, wander around and tell themselves that the little one will become financial windfall without knowing that the nugget can be a nugget», he continues. The relationship between agents and journalists is also widely shown in the film 4 Zeros with the blackmail of agent DZ, played by the rapper Kaaris, to an editor of the newspaper The Team. We can also count on other distinguished guests like Paul Pogba, Rolland Courbis, Guy Roux, Raí, Presnel Kimpembe, Marquinhos, Bradley Barcola, Warren Zaire-Emery, Olivier Ménard, Hervé Mathoux, Laure Boulleau, Karl Olive, but also Jean-Pierre Caillot.
While the first opus highlighted certain modern subjects for the time such as women’s football, business marketing or the very notion of young talents, the film 4 Zeros does the same with this political and social dimension now predominant in football. , with in particular this explosion of young self-taught agents – more or less competent – from the close entourage of players who dream of becoming the next Mino Raiola and Jorge Mendes: “Karim Djaziri told me that there are pitches in the suburbs, where there are guys sitting on fishing chairs, studying the players, because they too want to find the new Mbappé. But they are bogus, they have nothing. They just want to eat the beast, because the sorrel, because there are harsh conditions. I’d rather people get away with it than by being a lookout for drugs. There are agents who could have chosen drugs and they chose football because it is less dangerous, but they have the same methods. There are scouts on all the grounds who patrol and nothing escapes them so it’s a small enterprise which has been set up and then I’m also friends with Rai who told me that the Paris basin had become a hunting territory for all of Europe. You can see the whole world there. The Paris basin generates crazy footballers“. The character of young Kidane, played by Mamadou Haïdara, came to France by boat, leaving the Comoros to live his dream. A nod to current events that were close to the director’s heart: “I wanted to, I have respect for all these people who arrive, who flee the war, who flee countries. That’s why I dedicated the film to everyone who has a dream», concludes Fabien Onteniente. The film is released in theaters this week, on Wednesday October 23.
