Les ateliers Varan

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wakis, a lumberjack in the Central African Republic, works with his family collecting wood to process into charcoal. But faced with its increasing scarcity—and to avoid conflicts with his neighbours—he must “hunt” trees further and further away from his production site. Tanguy Djaka Yarissi creates an accurate social chronicle about the insecurity of a traditional trade. – Emmanuel Chicon

In an old district of Hanoi, formerly a village, new loud speakers must be repaired and installed. By observing everyday life, Vang Anh films with humor the animation caused by this event and plunges us into the heart of Vietnamese contradictions.

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.