EXCLUSIVE: Social media stars and the big screen rarely make for easy bedfellows, but French TikTok duo Golo & Ritchie are bucking the trend.
The comic duo has been posting about their lives in the housing estate of La Grande Borne in the commune of Grigny on the outskirts of Paris for the past five years.
Grigny ranks as one of the poorest towns in France and hit the headlines in the summer of 2023 after riots broke out there in response to the shooting dead in the northern suburb of Nanterre of teenager Nahel Mezouk by a policeman, after he fled a routine traffic stop.
Golo & Ritchie’s posts show another side to life in the estate and its diverse community and have steadily amassed them 1.5 million followers on Snapchat, another 661,000 on Instagram, and 578,000 on TikTok.
Their posts are also distinguished by the fact that Ritchie is autistic, which adds an extra layer to his relationship with Golo, who is determined to make his friend live life to the full.
This friendship has been brought to the big screen in Martin Fougerol and Ahmed Hamidi’s fly-on-the-wall documentary Golo & Ritchie, which captures the pair as they embark on a 600-mile (850 km) cycle ride from the southern port city of Marseille back to Grigny.
Released in France on August 14 by Apollo Films, the film had generated 250,000 entries by August 26 (representing a gross of roughly $1.9M), the best box office for a French documentary since Gilles Perret’s La Ferme des Bertrand in early 2022.
“It’s a phenomenal achievement for a documentary like this so we’re overjoyed,” says producer Hugo Sélignac at Chi-Fou-Mi who spearheaded the production.
The producer, whose credits include The Stronghold, November and Cannes 2024 title Beating Hearts, first came across the pair’s posts during the depths of the second Covid-19 lockdown in late 2020.
“While I didn’t find the first lockdown too hard, the second one was tougher. I had two films, The Stronghold and Mandibles that were due to come out but the cinemas were shut,” he recounts.
“A childhood friend introduced me to them and for the first time in a long time I found myself crying with laughter.”
Sélignac showed the duo’s posts to director friends Fougerol and Hamidi, which in turn gave birth to the idea for the documentary.
“We came to them very late. There were already a lot of people circling them, internet sites and other media,” says Sélignac.
The idea of following Golo & Ritchie on a long-distance bicycle ride was sparked by the latter’s obsession with bikes.
“He puts all the money he earns from the social networks into bikes. He’s got something like 70 bikes in storage,” says Sélignac.
The friends’ 10-day journey sees them making overnight stops in a convent, where they charm the nuns; a social centre, where they dine with an Afghan refugee actor who recounts the violence he saw back home, and as well as a luxury spa retreat, giving a snapshot into a broad section of French life.
The exchanges between the friends and the interactions with the people they met along the way were unscripted.
“The directors set the premise of the cycling trip and the itinerary but then we left them to get on with doing what they normally do… there were a lot of rushes, and the directors really found the film in post-production,” says Sélignac.
He and the directors understood they had something special on their hands on the back of a successful preview screening at the Alpe d’Huez International Comedy Film Festival in January.
“The first screening was a pleasant surprise. It’s an older audience but the spectators were overwhelmed by the film, says Sélignac.
“People who don’t know them, love the film, while people who do know them, also like the film because it offers something that goes beyond what they offer for free on the social networks.”
The producer believes that the wave of positivity generated in France by the successful Paris 2024 Olympics, that saw the country come together after divisive parliamentary elections, has also played its part.
“I don’t know if it would have worked as well a month ago… I feel the film is in sync with the values of the Olympic games in Paris and the positive mood in France in its aftermath,” he suggests.
The film’s unconventional tackling of disability has also won it fans at the International Paralympics Committee (IPC).
Golo & Ritchie were invited to carry the Paralympic flame earlier this week in the lead-up to the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paralympics in Paris on Wednesday, and as partners of its 17th edition, they will be creating content about the games for their social media handles.
Looking to the future, Fougerol and Hamidi are plotting a sequel that will see the duo cycle from the Senegalese capital of Dakar back to Grigny which they hope to shoot in 2025.
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