The Workshop

In La Ciotat in the south of France, a town known for its closed shipyard, a group of young people join a summer writing workshop where a well-known crime novelist will have them write a novel together. The argument quickly leaves the book and arrives at the present: unemployment, immigration, terrorism and where violence comes from. Antoine, one of the group, keeps hardening the discussion, and the writer starts paying him separate attention. After The Class, Laurent Cantet again built a film on young people and talk, with most of the cast non-professionals. It neither demonises nor excuses Antoine; the real tension sits between the writer's effort to understand him and her fear of him. It played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. Who it is for: viewers who like French social drama and films built on argument. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a clear conclusion.