Les Invisibles

The documentary talks to elderly gay men and lesbians. All of them were born in the twenties and thirties, which means they spent most of their lives in years when homosexuality was treated in France as a crime or an illness. They chose not to hide anyway. What they describe is not great political events: living as two women in a village, telling a family, finding anyone to meet, not ending up alone in old age. Nobody asks for pity; most of them laugh at what they are describing. Sébastien Lifshitz directs; a hundred and fifteen minutes. None of the people speaking are well known; the director found them through advertisements and word of mouth. It won the César for best documentary in 2013 and came out in the middle of France's argument about same-sex marriage.