Les ateliers Varan

Thi was born in a traditional family in the country. Her parents are teachers. She came to Hanoi to study languages. Today, she works as a translator. In the city, she gains more freedom: she meets foreigners and some of them have become friends. But when her mother comes to visit, she reminds Thi of the principles of traditional education, the duties and obligations of a young woman, and is insistent on the issues of marriage and children.

The grandfather tries to explain the family history, the traditions, privileges and duties of the eldest son to his grandson, who agrees to stay on in the village, unlike others of his generation who have left for the city.

In Paris, there is a network of men married to young Filipinas, chosen through an international agency. Here is the portrait of a couple from this business: immersed in a happiness that drowns the spectator.

Documenting the transformation of Bưởi Road in Hanoi, from a labyrinth of houses and small businesses to a highway, with demolition crew destroying buildings - some still inhabited, gleaners looking for metal scraps to sell for a living, and people living on the edge of this crowded road finding a way to keep on living.

A secret figure in French underground cinema, Maria Koleva has filmed all over Paris, written about Marx and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Serge Daney. This documentary is a portrait of a histrionic Koleva, trying to reveal her militant, poetic and cinematographic universe, located in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

After the demolition of the shacks and the construction of new buildings to resettle the residents of the old Curraleira neighborhood, an empty space remained. This film is about that place, about the encounters, stories, and activities that define it.

It's back-to-school time, and three-year-old Oona really, really doesn't want to go to school.

The father and mother of a little boy are both motorcycle cab drivers. The boy is often left alone in the single room that is their home. Produced by Ateliers Varan Vietnam.

A look at the life of society's outcasts through three locations: the Fleury-Mérogis prison, a low-income housing project in the Paris region, and the shacks of a vacant lot at the gateway to Saint-Ouen. A reflection on the idea and use of freedom.

Portrait of a young woman through her relationship to money. The director films her friend for a whole month. The dynamic of the film is based on the bond between the director and Patricia, and on the reactions of this young woman to the financial difficulties, real or imaginary that she meets.

Manuel raps about his life, his thoughts, his whole world of revolt, surrounded by the kind attention of the villagers who welcome him into their homes. Inhabited by his lyrics, he tries to live them and pass them on.

An elderly woman, a boy and a dog. With a cart, they wander around the city collecting boxes and papers, and only return when everyone else is asleep. Produced by Ateliers Varan Vietnam.

In 1985, the audiovisual training association Varan organized a documentary film workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa. The 12 young trainees filmed their community and their country from the inside, beyond the poor authorized journalistic clichés. Their material is organized in a chronicle, animated by the variety of subjects and views, and constitutes a real journey to the heart of apartheid, which we must look at today to measure how far we still have to go. 9 subjects are successively developed.

The Vietnamese State has decided to modernise and to establish vast tourist complexes along the entire coastal zone of the agricultural region of Quang Nam, forcing peasants off their lands. The film recounts the reactions of the inhabitants, many of whom participated in the liberation struggle for the independence of Vietnam.

War wounds body and soul : it divides a country, Yugoslavia, it splits families. A Serbian family with six children, who had been living in France for thirty years, went back to Belgrade while one of the daughters, Astrid, chose to stay in France. Fifteen months later the father and mother with one of their sons, come to spend a few days in Paris. The brother and sister meet again before what will be a new painful separation.

Gare du Nord in Paris is a transit station for all those coming from the suburbs, the provinces or abroad. Accompanied by Simon Mérabet, the son of Algerian immigrants from the Var, Human Geography offers a series of brief meetings with individuals who recount their lives in just a few words before disappearing to take their trains. The crowd of passengers is embodied in these stories, one life after another, and we see how globalization fashions individual destinies, subject to geographical and economic pressures.