“Sometimes the Cinema is Here To Make You Watch Something You Don’t Want to Watch”: Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire on Asphalt City
With his features Johnny Mad Dog and A Prayer Before Dawn — the former a breakneck, road-to-ruin chronicle of child soldiers in war-torn Liberia and the latter a visceral portrait of a British expat, imprisoned in Thailand on a drug charge and conscripted into a violent kickboxing competition — French-born director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire has consistently dropped viewers into extreme, ultra-violent scenarios, employing a mis-en-scene steeped in hyper-graphic realism to compel a one-to-one relationship between his audience and protagonists. His most recent feature, Asphalt City, is no different. Sauvaire’s first film to shoot in the US, where he has lived for over a […]
by Evan Louison on Mar 29, 2024
