Nearly 36 million views in three months, TikTok trends… Arte animated series Samuelwhich recounts with humor and poetry the emotions of a 10-year-old boy, met with “dizzying” success for its young director Émilie Tronche, touched by making “people happy”.
At only 28 years old, the designer, author and performer of this black and white series of 21 5-minute episodes continues interviews to return to a phenomenon that she “did not expect”, as she explained to the ‘AFP.
Born “in 2020, just before confinement”, from a desire to “go back to childhood”, his character Samuel evolves in the 2000s, confiding in his diary his love for Big Julie or his anxieties, from CM2 to middle school .
References for “millennials”
This journey through time is enhanced with period or timeless songs and references (MSN instant messaging, music fashion). Diddl leaves with the image of a mouse) well known to “millennials”, born in the 1980s and 1990s.
But if it touches their hearts, it appeals well beyond their generation, particularly on social networks.
The series, which has accumulated more than 9 million views since its release in March on arte.tv and YouTube, has 11.7 million on Instagram and more than 13 million on TikTok, where young people stage or draw themselves in including extracts.
“Happy melancholy”
“It’s quite dizzying to think about it,” comments Émilie Tronche, who has lived in Angoulême since her studies in animation but grew up, like Samuel, in Sucy-en-Brie, in the Paris suburbs.
If she strives to “keep a cool head”, she is delighted with the numerous messages received from people who identify with her character or tell her how much the series “brightens up their lives”.
“It makes people happy,” she notes. “It’s crazy to think (…) that a small animated series, which doesn’t necessarily show off with this simple feature, can generate a little joy” and “a kind of happy melancholy”.
Childhood, quite simply
The main asset of his creation is the accuracy of his representation of childhood, the director having drawn on his memories to create a “character who looks a little like (him)” and who takes his first name from a “nice” boy he met, in a “friendly” way, during an evening after the baccalaureate.
Emilie Tronche also accompanied the class of her mother, a CM2 teacher, during a visit to the castle of Vaux-le-Vicomte, where she made “sound recordings” and organized a hawk game staged in series. “It was exactly as I had imagined, they are all crazy, it seems like they are gambling with their lives. »
Meeting the public
The series, which can be enjoyed or watched in one go, also benefits from a format adapted to the spirit of the times. Its producers and Arte even went further by offering other shorter episodes specifically designed for TikTok in order to “reach a younger audience”.
“I didn’t know at all how it was going to be received,” relates the one who does not have an account on this network which she saw as “an evening where we are not invited”.
The pastilles published there are “more focused on moments of life or choreography” than the classic series, where dance is already very present. Emilie Tronche, who loved writing and wanted to be a choreographer when she was “younger”, filmed herself to draw certain sequences.
Ghibli and Lou!
It was in her final year that she turned to animation, after having “discovered the short films of the Gobelins students” and “rediscovered all the films” from the Japanese studio Ghibli.
The director, influenced among other things by comics Lou!, by Julien Neel, is also inspired by the music she listens to while writing. “The search for musical rights was a bit of a saga in itself,” relates the woman who had to give up the title Because of the Beatles and a dedicated stage in Samuel.
Our “Animation” file
Will we find his touching hero in a season 2, as his fans are demanding? “It’s on the table but we need ideas. And then I take a little rest,” says the one who imagines Samuel’s future at high school, “for fun.”