Les Idiots

When penniless young writer Labidi meets Elisa he knows she’s the one for him. But Paris is expensive. A captivating film that combines the classic themes of French New Wave cinema with questions about roots, familiarity and distance.

Dreams and reality collide as a young woman navigates a tumultuous relationship amid rising social tensions, protests and tragedies in Paris.

A few hours in Paris, one summer evening in 2020. The camera follows one passer-by then the other, traveling through the streets of the city and multiplying curious encounters: eccentric young people, original characters and nonconformists. During a single uninterrupted shot, the camera links the characters together through the same city, and the same time in crisis that each one goes through and questions in their own way.

Founded three hundred years ago as a refuge from slave traders, Ganvié, in Benin, has become the largest stilt village in Africa and now attracts thousands of tourists. But the people of the water, who once resisted colonization, are today colonized by a new invader: the water hyacinth. Said to have been introduced to decorate hotels and luxury homes, this plant now spreads at a staggering and uncontrollable rate, suffocating the lake. A small Beninese company has managed to turn this scourge into a resource—but at the cost of exhausting labor. Raw realism and imaginary visions blend together, as if one could only be understood—or endured—through the lens of the other.

Daniel spends his summer vacation alone in his aunt's apartment. Beside the sea, he will try to conquer his happiness, he is deter.

Amine is fifteen, a high school kid like any other. He has a girlfriend, Lou, and lives an ordinary life. One day, he has a bicycle accident, another one. This time, a young woman offers him a helping hand. She says his injured knee needs looking after, it's not a pretty sight. She lives nearby, so she takes him to her place. She's very relaxed with him, natural, sure of herself, happy in a world where everything seems so easy. He feels close to her, and finds her attractive. But is he attracted to her, or to this world that is so foreign to him? When he leaves, he notices that her apartment can be seen from the street, so he makes a plan to spy on her every day.

August 15, Leila and Paul are separated on a motorway service area. Travelers without a destination, they stay there, in search of comfort and tenderness, trying to escape their loneliness by mingling with that of others, that of people who drive at night.

This is the story of a grownup who is looking for answers in the words and imaginations of children.