Returning to Reims

The documentary builds the story of the French working class from the start of the fifties to the present day as an account at once private and political. The text comes from the book by Didier Eribon, written in the first person, and Adele Haenel speaks it. Every image is from an archive: pieces of French cinema and reports from French television. The director shoots nothing himself and tells the story by arranging existing footage anew. The film won the Cesar for best documentary. The method is bound up with the subject: the story of the class is already sitting inside the images television and cinema left behind, and the film reads them again. Adele Haenel’s voice carries Jean-Gabriel Periot’s eighty four minute French documentary.