We are on December 6, 2022 when in a masterful communication stunt, Kyan Khojandi appears on the set of Daily… hairy. Bald for several years, the comedian had a hair supplement installed without telling anyone. “When I let my hair down, I felt a real peace, like, ‘I don’t have to fight anymore, actually.’ […] As I rose to fame, more and more people started reminding me that I was bald. “, he will confide in a video-revelation posted on Instagram a week later. He confesses the complexity “for a man to lose his hair”. “Besides, I embrace the whole bald team, I know that each time we meet, there is a real empathy between us. »
What if after decades of denigration, the bald got their revenge? “We said to ourselves that it was a fairly exciting playground because it was completely virgin despite a theme that concerns a lot of men”, indicates Paul Sanfourche to 20 minutes. He co-directed the documentary bald revengebroadcast this Friday on France 5, with the voice of the same Kyan Khojandi as the red thread.
If masculinity sometimes comes down to the muscles, the voice or the penis of men, it would also be erected by the thousands on their heads. This film is a hyphen between the view of skulls devoid of hair and the representations of bald people in the media. The directing duo offers a “masculine cultural epic, from shame to pride”.
“From Jean-Claude Dusse to The Rock”
How the balding braggart became a stylish war machine? For decades, bald people have been the object of many fantasies nourishing both an imagination that we often hope is distant and a repulsion. “Men who have hair also ask questions,” insists Valentin Mollette, the second co-director. “We often look at his father, his grandfather to find out what will happen to us. »
How small and large screens have always fueled our imaginations about baldness. “There is a very clear evolution”, assures Paul Sanfourche. “We went from Jean-Claude Dusse to The Rock. We quickly saw that there was a fairly precise trajectory where we went from something badly assumed to something empowering. »
From a baldness always suffered – because no one chooses to have a forehead that widens over time – to a release of the hair by a smooth skull like a seizure of power that this state of affairs, there would be just one step. Like when Kyan Khojandi chose to let the clippers finish the job after seeing his first hair fall at age 20. “I assumed and I feel good, I find myself rather cool with my bald head”, he confides by video interposed.
“They wanted to surrender”
The smooth skulls, the hairless, the balls at zero… It is to those whose cranial morphology shines under the spotlights that the film gives a voice. For three months, the pair of directors went to meet the youtubeur Carlito, the actor Éric Judor, the dancer François Alu, or even the ex-footballer Franck Leboeuf. They recount their “intimate and collective revolution”, this moment when parting with their capillary mass was a revelation.
“As this is a question that has not been explored much, they wanted to open up, to tell something, reveals Paul Sanfourche We felt that they had retained things in them for many years. »
From their recordings, they retain striking stories that come together. “We realized that they had gone through the same stages, had experienced the same evolution, the same taming of their reflection in the mirror”, recalls Valentin Mollette. And until the experience of the kiss on the skull, a lucky charm for the French football team and its emblematic captain Fabien Barthez in 1998. that”, concludes Paul Sanfourche.