Executive Producer

Despite a degree in Political Science, Lauranne Bourrachot found less to thrill her studying constitutional law at the French National School of Civil Servants than she did in her quest to see every Roger Corman film.

Having run a contemporary dance company and worked as a production manager in animation (Determinism), she won funding from the Fondation Jean-Luc Lagardère for a project by a young director named Pierre Laffargue. She produced for Le Spectre the TV series Belle à Mourir, directed by Laffargue, before joining Marco Cherqui at Chic Films.

Nicknamed Mama Simba, meaning lion, by her army of Senegalese grips, sometimes considered stubborn and headstrong by her partners in business (and in life), Lauranne had to employ all her guile and skill to get Black on the screen, blowing up 4WDs in the centre of Dakar and coordinating the teams of local stuntmen, who spoke only French, with the South-African pyrotechnists who spoke no French at all - a less difficult task, she says, than trying to sell an action-comedy with an almost exclusively black cast to French distributors.