DJ MEHDI: MADE IN FRANCE

Thibaut de Longeville | France 2024 | 242’ | OV with english subtitles

DJ Mehdi, music lover, autodidact and turntable prodigy, was the first French artist to successfully bridge the gap between two milieus that had nothing to do with each other in the late 1990s’ French Pop music landscape: the HipHop in the banlieues surrounding the capital, and the middle-class inner-city House, Techno and Electro community.

Thirteen years after Mehdi’s untimely death by accident, the six episodes of the documentary web series by Thibaut de Longeville, who was a long-time friend of the DJ, shed light on the pioneering role that this free spirit, largely overlooked by the general public, played in the breakthrough of both scenes in France and internationally.

Private archive material and exclusive interviews with some of the big names in this specific French pop culture (Kerry James, Rim’K, Mokobé, MC Solaar, Daft Punk, Cassius, Justice, Pedro Winter from Ed Banger and many more) allow us to immerse ourselves in the little-known and all the more exciting world of DJ Mehdi and reveal the secret of the great unifier who was able to reconcile suburban Street Rap and pop-influenced HipHop, the sparkling House of the so called French Touch, as well as confrontational Electro, thereby playing a decisive role in the careers of some of today’s world-famous French acts, from Idéal J and the collective Mafia K’1 Fry (pronounced Can-Free) to MC Solaar, Cassius, Daft Punk, Justice and Pedro Winter with his label Ed Banger.

With this binge night, UNERHÖRT! is achieving a long-cherished dream. We regularly bring TV and online content to the big screen and have even shown a mini-series before – its episodes were so short that they all fit into one regular event slot. But now, we can finally invite you to join us for several hours of watching (and marvelling) at a complex six-part documentary series – and since we’re also bringing director de Longeville to the B-Movie for a virtual Q & A at half-time, we’ll get to spend (at least) four and a half jam-packed hours with the captivating story of the Afro-Tunisian immigrant child who became a genre-busting (oxymoron warning) global star behind the scenes.