Retour à Reims [Fragments]

Synopsis

A free adaptation, in Jean-Gabriel Périot's incisive style, of the eponymous autobiographical novel by Didier Eribon, narrated here by Adèle Haenel, Returning to Reims weaves together decades’ worth of artfully deployed archival footage, film clips and news reports to tell an intimate and political story of the French working class from the early 1950s until today.

Bio/Filmo

Jean-Gabriel Périot (Bellac, 1974) has made and edited numerous films in a wide range of different formats and fields, including features, shorts, documentaries and fiction films. His keen interest in the close ties between memory and image have won him many plaudits for his work with archive material. L’Alternativa has been screening films by Périot for many years. His first feature, Une jeunesse allemande, won the Critics Award at l’Alternativa 2015, and in 2019 we programmed a parallel section on his work, from which his feature Nos défaits won that year's International Feature Film Prize.