"You're between 15 and 22 years old, you want to sing in a musical, sign up at ozu.com." A young man shouts this announcement through a megaphone, and the stars pour into the city streets. About fifteen young people, mostly girls, a few boys, pass the casting. They stop in front of Jacques Meilleurat's camera for a song, sung a cappella or accompanied by a guitar or ukulele. Étoiles is the continuation of their performances, crudely captured in the summer light. It's simple and it's moving, through the sheer gift of these faces and voices venturing nakedly into the pure present of song. But since the author of Leaning on the Wall (Grand Prix de la Compétition Française, FID 2021) is anything but naive, the film is far from being so simple or innocent. Sometimes a synthetic accompaniment comes out of nowhere to add to the live sound. Then the casting film becomes the beginning of the musical to come. And as in any musical, the lyrics of the songs speak of and for those who sing them. As they often exchange a few secrets with the young man in the cast, each sequence becomes a portrait, and the film that of a generation, of a youth, popular and mixed, in a city in the Southwest. Today's youth also sings songs of yesterday: in this gap also emerges the self-portrait of a tormented filmmaker, in love with the people he films but revolted against his time. A darkness intermittently veils the brilliance of the performances: intimate or family pain, lives promised to precariousness, the shadow cast by Covid on the existence – of the people and the film. By having Les Mots Bleus sung and heard four times, there is no doubt that Meilleurat is paying homage to its author, Christophe, who died during the editing process, and dedicating Étoiles .