DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Alice Diop
PRODUCER: Sophie Salbot
PRODUCTION CO: Athénaïse, ARTE
PHOTOGRAPHY: Clement Alline, Sarah Blum, Sylvain Verdet
EDITOR: Amrita David
WITH: (as themselves) Marcel Balnoas, Ethan Balnoas, Florence Roche, Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko, Bamba Sibi, Ndeye Sighane Diop 
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FESTIVALS: Berlin

REVIEWS

“In this nuanced, sophisticated, and wonderfully engaging documentary, filmmaker Alice Diop (Saint Omer) creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of people from largely Black and immigrant communities in the Parisian suburbs, their lives and work connected by the RER B commuter train that cuts through the city from north to south.

​Her subjects include a migrant from Mali working as a mechanic; her own sister, a community care worker making house calls to the elderly; the writer Pierre Bergounioux, expounding upon centuries of French history and inequity; and an energetic variety of young people enjoying coveted leisure time in their own corners of the banlieues.

Appearing on screen — and therefore making herself part of the ‘we’ of the title — Diop says that in her filmmaking she aims to ‘conserve the existence of ordinary lives.’ Her film is not just a work of conservation, but also of intellectual rigor, and of love.”

– Film at Lincoln Center

“With a light, deft approach, Diop lays bare France’s gruesome, maddening postcolonial history simply by being a patient observer… Motored by Diop’s curiosity and compassion… her film is clear-eyed but not cynical, hopeful but not mawkish.”

– Melissa Anderson, 4Columns

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Nelson     
Wednesday, 07 August, 6.00pm

​Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 14 August, 6.00pm

Tauranga
Wednesday, 21 August, 6.30pm
​Luxe Tauranga

​Whanganui  
Monday, 02 September, 7.00pm​

Hamilton     
Monday, 09 September, 6.30pm

Queenstown    
Tuesday, 17 September, 8.00pm

​Auckland  
Monday, 30 September, 6.15pm 

Carterton     
Friday, 25 October, 7.00pm
Find more FRENCH CONNECTIONS >> 
French Connections is presented in
co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France