Kheiron
Waël
Overview
Wael, a former street child, makes a living from small scams with his adoptive mother and partner-in-crime Monique. When this unconventional duo swindles the wrong guy, Victor, an old acquaintance of Monique now in charge of a support organization for troubled teens, they have no choice but to become his interim secretary and educator in order to redeem themselves.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Alchemy of Second Chances
I’ve seen this trick before—the lovable grifter, the ragtag family of misfits, the redemptive arc that hinges on a single act of kindness. It’s a formula that’s launched a thousand indie comedies, and yet, somehow, Bad Seeds makes it feel new. Maybe it’s because Kheiron, the film’s writer-director-star, doesn’t just rely on charm.
He understands something deeper: that the line between con artist and caregiver is thinner than we’d like to admit. One wrong move, one bad decision, and suddenly you’re on the other side of it, trying to convince a room full of skeptical teenagers that you’re not the villain.
The film opens with Wael (Kheiron), a man who’s spent his life turning survival into an art form. He and Monique (Catherine Deneuve, in a role that feels like it was written just for her) run a small-time scam operation, fleecing marks with the practiced ease of people who’ve never known stability. Their dynamic is electric—part mother-son, part partners in crime, all sharp edges and unspoken loyalty.
When they cross paths with Victor (André Dussollier), an old acquaintance of Monique’s who now runs a youth rehabilitation program, the film takes a hard left turn. To avoid prison, Wael and Monique are forced to work at Victor’s center, trading their grifts for the far more dangerous work of actually caring for someone other than themselves.
What follows is a collision of worlds. The teenagers at the center—angry, guarded, and deeply suspicious—are a far cry from the easy marks Wael and Monique are used to. There’s no script here, no rehearsed lines.
Just raw, messy humanity. Kheiron, who based the film on his own experiences growing up in the French foster system, doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of it. These kids aren’t cute or quirky; they’re damaged, and they don’t trust anyone, least of all the two con artists standing in front of them.
The film’s greatest strength is its refusal to soften that reality. When Wael tries to connect with them, his usual tricks fall flat. He’s not a natural caregiver; he’s a man who’s spent his life exploiting people, and now he’s being asked to do the opposite.
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsShe helped the film get made. Then he tweeted the receipts.
Catherine Deneuve is in a supermarket con in the first reel of Bad Seeds, Kheiron's 2018 French comedy-drama Mauvaises herbes. She plays Monique, adoptive mother and partner in small scams, opposite the writer-director as Waël. André Dussollier is Victor, the old friend they try to rob, who runs a center for kids kicked out of school. Kheiron told Paris Match he wanted her because she is a great actress and a great name. "She helped the film get made and could bring a different audience than mine." He told Télé-Loisirs the pair read the script, liked his first film All Three of Us, and wanted to work. He did not fanboy. "I treated her like everyone else, latestnetflix.com contends, and that's why it worked." 
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The plot is his old job. Before the César-nominated debut about his Iranian parents fleeing the Shah, Kheiron spent years as an educator with excluded teenagers. "I lived miracles with them," he told BFMTV. "We have all looked for our place." To CinéSérie he added the shop talk. He had a psychologist, a mediator, a tutor. He did not write Deneuve or Dussollier into the draft. He reread each role as if he had to play it. The kids in the film, six of them, get ten euros a day to show up. Waël teaches them to brush their teeth with a slave-market joke and pretends he coined famous quotes. The New York Times' Scott Tobias said the message arrives one corny aphorism at a time. Decider compared it to a French Summer School and still told people to stream it. , , ,
Four hundred thousand was the ceiling
Opening day, 21 November 2018, about 40,000 tickets in 370 theaters, first among new French releases, per aVoir-aLire. Three weeks later Télé-Loisirs had 360,000 admissions on 455 screens. All Three of Us had done 628,000 on about 250 copies. Kheiron posted on 13 December. "I am not going to lie to you. The figures for Mauvaises Herbes, my second film, are disappointing. It will finish at 400,000 admissions maximum and I admit it, we are all unpleasantly surprised by that number." Serene, he said, because they had done their best. Frustrated, because he likes to learn from a fall and this time he could not find the mistake. He told fans they had until Tuesday. After that the film would vanish from screens. ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt0iphFDtyE
Netflix put Bad Seeds up on 21 December 2018, a month after the French theatrical date. Wikipedia and the Daily Dot clock that window. IMDb later listed about $3.07 million worldwide. Dussollier, 72, told BFMTV the set had no taboos, no rules, no frame, and that it felt like a relief. Kheiron posted his own trailer. The con at the supermarket still plays. The tweet about 400,000 is the part that aged. A Deneuve movie that needed a streaming dump to find the kids it was written for. , , 
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Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.