Good & Bad News

Rob Rombout crosses Alsace by train, a stranger passing through, and talks with the people he meets, among them Sylvie Levy, Philippe Poirier, Ibtissam Mellouki and Daniel Ziegler, about things that seem to have nothing to do with regional identity. In a compartment nobody knows anyone; all they share is the same train at the same time. Listening, looking out of the window, moving on: from their stories the film draws a portrait of a region, shared for a moment with strangers.

In Perm, an isolated city in the snowbound Urals, a festival named after Robert Flaherty, Flahertiana, brings together some forty Russian directors to take stock of documentary cinema. The debates are heated, at minus twenty-five degrees, and between the interviews their own films answer back. Rob Rombout is the only foreign filmmaker at this “international” festival. He is on a special Perm-mission.