• The first episode of season 11 of Skam France is available since Friday on France.tv Slash.
  • This new season focuses on Rym, played by Carla Souary, and the theme of delinquency.
  • New team, new theme... Alexandre Gorget and Marine Josset, the collection directors of this new season, take stock of the novelties.

A new season for a new generation! The French adaptation of the Norwegian format Skam has an unparalleled longevity. France.tv Slash has put online this Friday the first episode of the 11th season of Skam France, teen phenomenon series that totals more than 400 million videos viewed on Slash and YouTube. This new salvo of 10 episodes is centered on Rym, a young girl from the South of France, who arrives during the year at Dorian High School. Update on what's new.

A new team behind the camera

This new season of Skam France no longer has any connection with the previous characters just like the team behind the camera. At the collection direction of the teen-drama is now a duo composed of Alexandre Gorget, who worked on ASKIP (still for France.tv Slash) and Marine Josset, who collaborated with Cherif on France 2 and Mortel on Netflix.

At their side in the writing room, Fairouz M'Silti (Reuss, Here everything begins), Anaïs Topla (Validé, Skam France season 6), and Mathilde Cadrot (Recto Verso). Manon Gaurin, who came from advertising, succeeds Shirley Monsarrat as director.

A strong new theme

"We were lucky that it was a reboot, at the same time, we could feed on Skam's codes, but we could also appropriate them and make them evolve," says Alexandre Gorget. As usual in Skam, this 11th season highlights a strong theme, delinquency, shown from the point of view of the protagonist, Rym, an insubordinate teenager placed in foster care by court decision.

A theme with which the duo in the direction of the writing had "certain affinities", continues Alexandre Gorget. "I had a somewhat conflictual adolescent journey vis-à-vis the law, order, which also earned me some setbacks, and also the fact of being tossed from high school to high school," he says.

"What I could appropriate in this theme, which was a little more related to my adolescence, is the other big subject of the season, namely the family breakdown and the relationship of our protagonist Rym to his mother. Having grown up without a father, with necessarily a more fusional relationship with my mother, I had something that I could appropriate in this place, "says Marine Josset.

"We also did a lot of research around this theme, we met specialized educators, people working at the PJJ (judicial protection of youth), and lawyers specializing in juvenile law," says Alexandre Gorget.

A rebellious and mysterious new heroine

As soon as he arrives at Dorian High School, Rym is reframed by the headmaster: no overflow on his part will be tolerated. What did young Rym do to get her such a welcome? "We didn't want to do like all the other seasons where we reveal the theme from the teaser. It made sense in relation to Rym, who does not want to reveal himself at the beginning of the season, and also, if what she hides is very heavy, as much as it is hidden from the viewer, "explains Alexandre Gorget.

The teenager seems to resent the whole world. "She doesn't want to be there. She doesn't take tweezers, because it's not in her personality. She's not super affable from the start, and yet you have to love her and be touched by what she's going through." "He is a character who protects himself, who hides his emotions a lot. That's what makes it touching for us," explains Alexandre Gorget.

"It is through the relationship with her mother, in the first episode, that we discover another side of her," says Marine Josset. And to explain: "What I knew intimately from my adolescence is this feeling of injustice vis-à-vis a family situation that we did not choose and this impression that it is easier for others",

The girl also seems determined to keep her past a secret. "Skam is always trying to be as close as possible to the feeling of the character in light this season. As we are with a character who has trouble confronting certain things from her past, suddenly, we are in the same state as her and we do not create an effect of dramatic irony. The idea is to be in total empathy with Rym," continues Marine Josset. We will have to wait until the fourth episode to know what she went through.

A promising new group of friends

Rym will soon be adopted by a gang nicknamed "the weirdos" (the bizarre) - in opposition to the "clones", the fake cool of high school - and composed of the voluble Cléo (Alma Schmitt), a non-binary teenager using the pronoun "he", the extravagant Jade (Romane Parc) and the son of the headmaster a little geek, Yannis (N'Landu Lubansu).

"We started from a document where the characters were pre-existing, but sketched. We worked a lot to find out how the group was going to form and live together," says Alexandre Gorget. "We wanted there to be a gap between how Rym perceives herself, which is pretty cool, and them, which she perceives at first as a little weird," explains Marine Josset.

If the writers paid a lot of attention to the group dynamic, they also wanted to develop subplots with these three other characters that feed the main plot. "The other characters around the protagonist also represent a variation around a theme, there, if the theme is the relationship to authority and the law and the family, we will find in them some elements that speak of this theme," reports Marine Josset.

"Each character is also thought of in relation to something thematically interesting that would potentially be addressed in later seasons," concludes Alexandre Gorget. Even if France Télévisions has not yet confirmed next seasons of Skam France, this new band, as endearing as it is singular, is full of promise!

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