Tye Sheridan was in the middle of shooting The Night Clerk when Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire was adamant he needed the young actor to star in his upcoming paramedic movie Black Flies, so the French director flew to Utah in the middle of that film’s shoot to convince him to come aboard.
“At first I was like, ‘Can’t we just wait until I finish the shoot to talk?’ but he was adamant,” Sheridan said during a conversation and Deadline’s Cannes Studio. “So we met and had lunch and just really hit it off and as soon as I saw his films I was immediately blown away by him and really excited to jump on board and start working with him.”
The movie, which had its world premiere In Competition on Thursday, is based on the Shannon Burke novel of the same name and takes an intimate view of life on the streets and one medic’s struggle to maintain his desire to help despite his growing fear that nothing he can do will make a difference. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance and the choices of two men caught in the middle. Ollie Cross (Sheridan) is ready to do good and in preparation for his dream of medical school, he hits the streets driving an ambulance alongside Rutkovsky (Sean Penn), a grizzled veteran and one of New York’s best medics.
The actor credits Sauvaire for leading the charge on researching the paramedic work and that working with medics “were instrumental in us doing our research” and they began riding in ambulances with paramedics since 2018.
“The way John shoots, you know, it’s really very visceral and the camera is kind of all over the place so you never know what you’re going to see so it needed to be very real and we spent a lot of time trying to nail the authenticity of that and the authenticity of their jobs,” said Sheridan.
Sauvaire admits that working with Penn was a bit “intimidating” at times given Penn is also a director himself but had a great experience he said working with him.
Check out the video above.
