A DRAMATIC FILM (Un Film Dramatique)

Director: Éric Baudelaire

2019, France, 114

Cast: Fatimata Sarr, Anida Ait Abdesselam, David Pop

 

Un film dramatique is a lively documentary that reveals the stories of the first class to attend the newly constructed Dora Maar middle school in a notorious banlieue outside Paris. Filmed over four years, 21 diverse middle schoolers are given cameras to record their daily lives at school and home. With a refreshingly uninhibited approach, Éric Baudelaire offers a new perspective on Islamophobia, assimilation and economic inequality that manages to be insightful and playful. As the students debate elections and the immigration crisis, they also seek to find an answer to the central questions: who are we, and how do we come together to create the future?

“It’s seeing the world through the eyes of these children that makes this movie so deeply joyful.” – Teo Bugbee, New York Times.