Less than ten days before the eyes of the world set on Paris and the Seine, Paris 2024 reveals the names of the two men and two women who wrote the narrative of the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony. In order to build this unique story, Thomas Jolly, Artistic Director of the Ceremonies, gathered around him Fanny Herrero, scriptwriter, Leïla Slimani, author, Patrick Boucheron, historian and Professor at the Collège de France, and Damien Gabriac, author and playwright.
Thomas Jolly called on these four, very different and complementary authors right from the start of the creation process, to write a story for this unprecedented, festive and inclusive Ceremony.
Preliminary work allowed the team to determine many structuring choices such as the transformation of the Ceremony’s structure, usually organised around an artistic show, the athletes’ parade, and the protocol part. This new narrative mixes all these elements together and enables the spectators to follow the stream of the Seine and of the Parisian monuments along the banks, and to offer athletes a central place in the show from Austerlitz Bridge to Trocadéro, throughout 12 sequences.
“As soon as I was appointed, I knew I had to gather a team of authors to create the narrative of this unique ceremony, at the heart of Paris, of its history, its monuments, and to help the whole world immerse into French culture at its most extraordinary. To design this unprecedented show on such a monumental stage, where visual and memorial abundance intertwine, I wanted to gather a team of personalities from diverse backgrounds, gifted with their own sensibility and writing.” Thomas Jolly
“After revealing the artistic team of the Opening Ceremony, we are thrilled to announce the four talents who will bestow this absolutely unique and unprecedented show all its storytelling power: Fanny Herrero, Leïla Slimani, Patrick Boucheron and Damien Gabriac! This beatutiful gender-equal, multidisciplinary, daring team created a founding story to this ceremony that we look forward to showing you on 26 July, on the Seine. It is thanks to their imagination, their words, their vision, translated into the most beautiful expression of performing arts by the artistic team, that the extraordinary Odyssey of the Paris 2024 Games will come to life.” Tony Estanguet, President of Paris 2024
“I grew up in a rugby locker room, following my father, then in a volleyball locker room, as a player. My respect and affection for athletes are immense. Ever since I was a child, as the Olympics grow closer, I get restless with excitement and eagerness. When I was offered a part in the writing process of the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony, I accepted, overjoyed at the idea of joining this assembly of remarkable and intimidating talents who have brought me so much during this months-long teamwork effort. I brought to the table my skills as a scriptwriter and tried to unfold a great variety of registers and emotions throughout these twelve sequences, to show the world what a complex, multiple, ever-changing entity France is.” Fanny Herrero
“For the novelist that I am, used to working in deep solitude, it has been a wonderful challenge to imagine, together with people I admire, such an immense ceremony. To tell a story that brings people together, that inspires and ravishes. To tell what France contributed to the world, and what the world contributed to France. And with Paris as our stage, a city inhabited by both the dreams of artists from around the world, and strangers come to look for magic, love, or freedom. I was eight years old in 1989, for the bicentenary of the 1789 Revolution, and I still remember the emotion I felt at this great moment of collective joy. Ten years later, I moved to France. I tried to bring my eye as a writer from here and there, as an immigrant, as a woman. To me, as a writer of the body and of eroticism, the sight offered by sports competitions is that of immense poetry and intensity: performance, emancipation and, at the same time, deep humility. It is such a joy to have written as one with the sole objective of making people dream, forget what divides us, for just a moment, and enjoy the bliss of being together.” Leïla Slimani
“As a historian of urban freedoms and of the power of images, how could I resist Thomas Jolly’s offer to contribute to the writing of the Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony? To me, it was the perfect opportunity to show so many people what history can do, provided that it resists identity injunctions; that it can deliver an open, diverse, lively and rousing narrative. A story of space that shares collective imaginaries, in which everyone can find themselves, and acknowledge France’s place in the world, as well as the world’s presence in France.” Patrick Boucheron
“When Thomas Jolly offered that I take part in the writing and staging of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Games, I accepted instantly, as I have been passionate about sports ever since I was a child, and about performing arts. One couldn’t have dreamt of a more beautiful present. I have been working with Thomas for years, as an author, actor and playwright. We have known each other through and through, we share the same philosophy, we do not hierarchise any culture, we cherish Molière and Britney Spears, a good Pasolini movie and a world cup final. It is in this eclectic, poetic, political and rallying spirit that I threw my body into this “Seine”, as a true heir to Jean Vilar et André Malraux.” Damien Gabriac
BIOGRAPHIES
FANNY HERRERO has been a scriptwriter since 2006. She first worked on a number of series across the French audiovisual landscape, honing her sense of character and drama in very different worlds – the crime comedy Les Bleus, the historical drama A French Village for France 3, the epic Odysseus for Arte, the family comedy Fais Pas Ci Fais Pas Ça (Don’t do this don’t do that) for France 2, and the political comedy Kaboul Kitchen for Canal Plus.
She is the creator of the series Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent!), which tells the story of a prestigious Parisian talent agency (France 2 / Netflix). As head writer and principal scriptwriter for the first three seasons, she also helped establish the figure of the French showrunner. A real success in France and internationally, the series was awarded Best Series and Best Screenplay in 2016 by the Association des Critiques de Séries (ACS), Crystal Globe for Best Series in 2018 and 2019, Best 52′ Series at the 2018 La Rochelle Festival, and International Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series in 2021. Dix Pour Cent is now adapted in many countries.
She then created and directed the mini-series Drôle (Standing Up) for Netflix, a drama about the intersecting destinies of four young stand-up comedians in Paris. She is also a founding member of Le SAS, a group of scriptwriters who influenced the development of French series in the 2010s. In 2022, she will be Chair of the Competition Jury at the 5th Canneseries Festival. Fanny Herrero also has a special bond with sport: daughter of rugby player and coach Daniel Herrero, she played volleyball at a high level, spending her teenage years in sport-studies, and winning several caps for the French youth team.
Born in Rabat, LEÏLA SLIMANI is a French-Moroccan journalist and writer. She received critical acclaim for her first novel, In the Ogre’s Garden, in 2014, and went on to win the Prix Goncourt in 2016 with Lullaby, aged just 35. She began her career as a journalist and joined the magazine ‘Jeune Afrique’, where she mainly covered social issues in the Maghreb and West Africa. Influenced by feminist writers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, Leïla Slimani is a committed author whose literature explores the female condition and power relations. Through her essays and opinion pieces, she defends universalism, the fight for dignity and the rejection of racism and fanaticism. Internationally acclaimed for her work, translated into more than 35 languages, Leïla Slimani has received numerous awards abroad, where she represents a modern, cross-cultural vision of French literature. She is considered one of the leading figures in the fight for freedom of speech and individual rights in the Maghreb countries.
PATRICK BOUCHERON is a professor at the Collège de France, where he has held the ‘History of Powers in Western Europe, 13th-16th centuries’ chair since 2015. A specialist in the political and urban history of medieval Italy, he has developed an original approach to symbolic power, the communal experience and urban space: it is at the crossroads of these different interests that he has published some 20 books, translated into many languages.
His most popular books include: Léonard et Machiavel (2008), The Power of Images (2013) and France in the World: A New Global History, which has had a considerable impact. As an editor and producer of radio programmes and documentary series for public broadcasting, he defends the voice of a committed and learned discourse at the heart of the public use of history. It is also in this spirit that he has recently increased his theatrical experiments.
DAMIEN GABRIAC is an actor, writer and director, trained at the Rodez Theatre School, then at the of the National Theatre of Brittany’s École nationale supérieure d’art dramatique, directed by Stanislas Nordey. Stanislas Nordey gave him the opportunity to act under his direction in several shows: Cris by Laurent Gaudé, Peanuts by Fausto Paravidino, Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, The System by Falk Richter, The Just by Albert Camus, John by Wajdi Mouawad, etc. From 2006 to 2011, he worked with Roland Fichet. At his side, he wore many hats: both on stage and as a director, he took part in a project comprising four shows entitled Comment Toucher (How to touch), linking West Africa, Central Africa and Brittany. In 2010, he joined Thomas Jolly, with whom he worked on William Shakespeare’s Henry VI and Richard III, followed by Les Tantalides. Damien Gabriac then joined the Le Quai Theatre in Angers directed by Thomas Jolly, where he revived Henry VI and Richard III, this time in a 24-hour version, and played in The Dragon by Evgueni Schwartz. As an author, he is also responsible for Le Point de Godwin, which he directed at the Avignon Festival; Box Office, directed by Thomas Jolly in 2013; and Chronicles of the Avignon Festival, television episodes on the Festival’s 70th anniversary.
