Five questions to Jericho Jeudy, director of With or Without Cash

Filmmaker Jericho Jeudy likes to tell stories and meet people. And he likes to take risks.

He is one of the co-founders of the KINO movement, which has seen the birth of many creators in addition to expanding into some forty countries over the past twenty years. He is passionate about short films and likes spontaneous works.

With his wife, also a filmmaker, he feeds his notrecinemamaison.com platform. Participatory cinema as it is rarely done. TV and travel are intimately linked in the course of Jericho.

He realised Benoit at the beach, Top 10 unusual then the series With or without cash whose fourth season arrives on Évasion.

This visit to Canada, was it planned or imposed?

It’s our COVID-19 season. We were supposed to do the west coast of Canada and the United States, but the pandemic forced us to postpone filming several times. This season took two years to complete!

Even if the animators seem to improvise their stay, what preparation does it take to shoot an episode?

It’s true that we have to plan everything, if only to apply for permits to shoot, but I can say that the draw is true. We film it in pre-production with a cell phone. It is important to keep this element of chance. As we are a small team (a director-cameraman and a cameraman-sound guy), we shoot one day with an animator, one with the other and a third where they are together and to take additional images. We shoot four activities a day. The schedule is complex and tight because you have to take advantage of the outside light. We are also always concerned about the weather, because we have to be connected between the activities of Guillaume (Lambert) and those of Geneviève (Néron) which, during editing, take place on the same day. This is a non-negotiable limit. These are intense shoots, but the memories are extremely intense too.

Does the concept leave a lot of room for improvisation for the animators?

I encourage improvisation. When we are in a market, for example. We know that we have an appointment with someone, but to get there, I encourage the facilitators to meet people, to talk to them. These are beautiful human moments. This is where the magic happens. It’s a show that allows us to find the culture of the place. The vibes. To see how it is to live there. Improvisation, there is even more when we are abroad. The more the animators are destabilized, the more they darken and enter the madness of the place.

A $1000 day is the dream, but is a $100 day really possible?

Inflation, we feel it and we live it in preparation. The $100 gets smaller and smaller. It forces us to be creative. For example, if a visit to a presidential palace is not on the itinerary of the rich and it is too expensive for the lowly, one simply goes to the changing of the guard with the lowly. It’s free and it allows us to show the palace in another way. In Asia, on the other hand, $100 is huge. We develop stuff. Sometimes there are prizes for the rich and tourists and others for the rest of the world. Eating in a bouiboui in a neighborhood in Vietnam is an amazing experience and costs next to nothing. What is fun for the public is to put themselves in the suitcases of the animators and imagine the route they could take. People often write to us on social media to tell us that they went to the same restaurant as us. We inspire them and it allows them to know what to expect on the budget side.

In four seasons, what are the craziest activities with and without cash that you have shot?

There are so many ! We went to a dream mansion in Buenos Aires. Guillaume learned to play polo even though he barely knew how to ride a horse. We took a dragonfly helicopter over the tip of Argentina to land in a valley and drink champagne. I am also thinking of the episode in La Paze, Bolivia. We were in the highest town, El Alto, which is over 4000 meters. There are buildings that look like Transformers. We witnessed a wrestling match. It’s like a Las Vegas on acid. At each visit, there is the spectacular, but above all there are encounters.

With or without cashMonday 9 p.m. on Évasion