VraiVrai FIlms

In France, laughing at the powerful has become a risky business. Over the past thirty years, the country’s most outspoken comedians on television and radio have been systematically silenced, sidelined, censored, or even fired. In public broadcasting as in the private media, the same pattern keeps repeating itself: satire is tolerated as long as it doesn’t bite. The moment it takes aim at those in power, the microphone is switched off. From the sets of Canal+ to the studios of France Inter, through the corridors of France Télévisions, and from the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy to that of Emmanuel Macron, this documentary traces the mechanisms of a systematic silencing—one that reveals much about the true state of freedom of expression in French broadcasting.

In a Buenos Aires hospital, Dr. Esteban Rubinstein tackles general medicine from an extramoral viewpoint. Basing himself on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical oeuvre, in his office he builds with his patients a space of reflection on the body, health and sickness.

In the rocky desert Algerian border country, Fethi and his fellow villagers eke out a living smuggling goods – mostly petrol – into Tunisia, working at night and paying off the local crime lords. Saad, a film-maker trying to raise money to finish his movie, has worked for a year with Fethi. He lives in his family’s shed, included as part of a loving household as well as their risky business. At the same time he is obviously an outsider: smartly dressed and prepared to talk back to anyone, including the imam. Tough, gritty but also moodily atmospheric, its tension sustained by a tumultuous soundscape, theis remarkable film delves deeply into the complexities of family, friendship and daily survival.

An intimate double portrait of two young men from Ivory Coast who fled to Europe together. Kader now has legal residency in Italy, while Inza is undocumented in France. For both, the gap between expectation and reality proves almost impossible to bridge.

“Rolex the Portuguese” has risked the “adventure” in neighbouring Burkina Faso, without success. Here he is back in Abidjan, to make lots of money. With his companions, aged between 15 and 25, he makes a living from casual trade, in particular from that of “grazing”, i.e. online scams, taking advantage of the monetary largesse of white women in search of love or sensations, whose money they then blow in the ‘maquis’ (bars) or nightclubs.

A forced disappearance doesn't only end with the life of the person who has disappeared, but generates, like the ripples of a stone thrown into water, an enormous emotional scar in their families and in society. In the early 80s, José Miguel Etxeberria Álvarez, alias 'Naparra', a member of the Autonomous Anti-capitalist Commandos, was disappeared. Between crossed statements, numerous vindications and judicial indifference, his family will try to find an answer for his disappearance. More than forty years later, Eneko has taken up the baton of the search for his brother to close the wound that has remained open for so many years.

Ariane Astrid Atodji investigates to discover the reason why her father left his family in Benin years ago and never returned.