Movies

Based on the novel by Didier Eribon, the film tells an intimate and political story of the French working class from the beginning of the 1950s to today.

A fascinating reflection on working class life in France over the past 70 years, Jean-Gabriel Périot’s documentary is a loose adaptation of fragments from Didier Eribon’s 2009 memoir Returning to Reims, in which he evokes his return to the hometown he had abandoned 30 years earlier. Adèle Haenel narrates the story of a prodigal child returning home and a reconciliation that prompts discussion of a mother’s life, marriage, and the opportunities she and other women never had.

Interlacing a mosaic of archive footage with personal testimony, Périot vividly evokes growing up in a working-class environment, together with a profound analysis of the shifting currents in the political life of France over the last decades.