We Review: A Fascinating Doc Exposing the Fractures in French Society Along One Railway Line We Review: A Fascinating Doc Exposing the Fractures in French Society Along One Railway Line
An outwardly modest observational doc that builds cleverly into an epic intellectual interrogation of France s multicultural project.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Director: Alice Diop
With: Alice Diop, Ismael Soumaïla Sissoko, N’deye Sighane Diop, Pierre Bergounioux, Marcel Balnoas, Ethan Balnoas. (French dialogue)
Running time: Running time: 115 MIN.
Sarah Blum
The public, the private and the deeply personal run on parallel tracks in French director Alice Diop’s documentary “We,” a series of vignettes of life along the RER B, a railway line running through the suburbs and exurbs of Paris out to the surrounding countryside. But as it gains momentum, this deceptively cunning documentary which out of a lineup full of showier titles won the top prize in Berlin
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Written by the director (before she tried her hand at fiction in the form of
Saint-Omer), the story unfolds around an urban train link, the RER B, which crosses Paris and its outskirts from north to south. It journeys across these indistinct spaces known as inner cities and suburbs, resulting in various encounters involving a cleaning lady in Roissy, a scrap merchant in Bourget, a nurse in Drancy, a writer in Gif-sur-Yvette, a hunt follower in the Chevreuse Valley and the filmmaker herself who revisits the area where she grew up; portraits representing a variety of individual pieces, which come together to form a whole and a potential “We”.