The Assembly Line

Mathias Gokalp's 2023 French film adapts Robert Linhart's autobiographical book, published in 1978. A few months after May 1968, Robert, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure with an agrégation in philosophy, takes a job as an unskilled worker at the Citroën plant at Porte de Choisy while hiding his intellectual background. His aim is to rekindle the revolutionary fire, but most of the workers no longer want to hear about it. The most honest thing the film does is refuse to vindicate its protagonist. Robert's time in the factory teaches him the distance between theory and the reality of labour; the workers' struggle does not take the shape he expected, and the strike he supports does not end in victory. Swann Arlaud's performance carries that disappointment quietly. Being one of the few hundred intellectuals who entered factories from 1967 onward, the établis, is treated here not as heroism but as an education. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of the French labour movement, political narratives after 1968 and factory films. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a struggle that ends in victory, or unfamiliar with the political context.