Mother and Son – set to be released in the UK early 2023 – is another milestone in @stephanebak’s journey, and is his most complex and finely tuned performance yet. In the film, Jean learns the hard way that he’s no longer a boy. For Bak, the experience is familiar. “I was in this environment with older people, having to deal with contracts, not being screwed over, not having my kindness taken for weakness,” he says. Making money came with responsibilities his peers didn’t understand. It made him grow up fast – so much so that his friends still tease him, declaring him an “old soul” at 25. “They’re always saying ‘You’re like, 60! You never want to go out!’” he laughs. This summer, his plan is to spend less time online, and more time reading. “I just got done with The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, it’s a beautiful book about this Senegalese author that enters the French literature scene. A scene that he doesn’t belong to, necessarily,” he says. He is drawn to these diaspora stories, which he describes as “still very young in terms of French cinema”. He cites films he’s made like Mali Twist, The Mercy of the Jungle, Roads, with Fionn Whitehead and Sebastian Schipper, and now Mother and Son as examples. He doesn’t want to “talk bad on French cinema” but says growing up as a Black kid in France, he’d rarely see people who looked like him represented in the movies. “If it wasn’t for American blockbusters, you don’t see yourself,” he states. “I love French cinema, and I’m a Godard fan, I’m an Assayas fan. But these people that live next to me, that I know, or that you might run into every day – they’ve got beautiful stories to tell too. I don’t get why we don’t see them on the screen.” Excerpt from our issue 31 cover interview with Stéphane Bak by @simranhans – full story in bio. Photography @anatheine, styling @julielucilevelut. Bak wears @loewe