alr

We

Directed by Alice Diop.
With Marcel Balnoas, Ethan Balnoas, Florence Roche.
France, 2021, DCP, color, 115 min.
French with English subtitles.
DCP source: MUBI

The move in Diop’s documentary filmmaking from individual subjects to a collective subject reaches its apex in We, a carefully composed, Wiseman-esque tapestry of quotidian scenes from across Paris, all of them linked by their proximity to the north-south RER commuter train that runs through the suburb of the filmmaker’s youth. Divvying focus between labor and leisure, immigrant and native, old and young, white and Black, and rich and poor, We attempts to capture the elusive character of a city, gently interrogating popular concepts of community and national identity. By juxtaposing the toils of service workers (a Senegalese nursing home caregiver, a Malian mechanic) against the leisure activities (game hunting, historical reenactments) of wealthier Parisians, the film reveals starkly opposed realities coexisting in the same city, but We offers much more than an exercise in dialectics. Diop also makes room for incursions into her family history with intimate archival footage of her father, which offers further context into the sense of exile and longing that permeates much of the film’s diasporic ensemble.

Part of film series

Read more

Alice Diop’s Souvenirs of Lost Time

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

Chile Año Cero / Chile Year Zero

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema