RIDM 2015: Je suis le peuple

JE SUIS LE PEUPLE  - I AM THE PEOPLE

by ANNA ROUSSILLON

QUEBEC PREMIERE -INTERNATIONAL FEATURE COMPETITION

2014 / Colour / France / 111 min. / Arabic with French and English subtitles

This film has won the BEST EDITING IN AN INTERNATIONAL FEATURE Award which was given to the film's editors Saskia Berthod and Chantal Piquet. It was recognized that Je suis le peuple by Anna Roussillon, was  “an elegant and seamlessly structured chronicle of a revolution that weaves the local and the national as lived and seen by an unforgettable family in a province far from Tahrir Square.”

The film deals with a Egypt's recent history of about three year duration when Egypt saw in succession three different presidents at the helm of the country. The events at the Tahrir Square that deposited Hosni Mubarak from his presidential post and brought him to jail, began just a day after Anna Roussillon leaves Egypt at the end of the first segment of her film. 

The director befriends an Egyptian family who lives in a village outside of Luxor. The head of the family Farraj, Anna's principal friend, is the focus of her film. You can see him in the very top photo in this article, on the right. He is advanced in age but keeps working in the fields and a bit later establishes an additional wheat milling enterprise. One thing I failed to catch properly was his relationship to two women in the film. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up with the film's images and miss a couple of final words in subtitles. At first I thought the very first woman at the beginning of the film was his wife. But then she states later she is too old to have children, yet at the same time he is surrounded by his very young kids. Then another woman is said to be pregnant with his child. I even though he had two wives, as Muslims can have four wives, and had to contact the production of the film to clarify the relationships to me. I was told that one woman is a Farraj's neighbour, and the other one is his wife to whom he married late in his life.

The film shows that at first people outside of Cairo, the rural population, were disconnected from the events at the Tahrir Square. Those who started the revolution did not seem to represent fully the ordinary people working on the land, they did not coordinate their actions with the rest of the Egypt's population. Those at Tahrir Square were in the beginning mostly young men, and their personal frustrations and concerns did not appear to have been the same as of other population represented by the Farraj's family. Yet little by little, as Farraj reads newspapers and watches news with his children on his new satellite TV, he gets into the emotions of what is going on in Cairo and starts supporting the revolution.

Contrary to Farraj, his neighbour, the older woman, keeps her cool about the events throughout the film. She really gives the impression of being deeply rooted in the earth, as we see her in the very first shot in the film being seated on the ground by a country road. She does not get excited by all the turmoil caused by the deep political and geopolitical games going on in her country. She is an earthy person with a knowledge of what common and immediate life-supporting values are the most important ones.

Although the Farraj's household was followed with a camera during an extended period of time, we do not see them, not even once, having a meal together, which would have revealed much better the dynamics within the family. After all, family's meals represent not only the body nourishment but also a family consolidation ritual. It is important, since a family is a basic building block of a society.  

The film shows that very little had changed in the country for ordinary people regardless of the revolution, changes of presidents, and the general turmoil of all those political events.

A worthy film to see to remind oneself of a great French proverb:

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." (Literally, “The more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”)

Or is it the same thing?

Film's Official Synopsis

“What did the successive Egyptian revolutions mean for villagers living far from the action happening in Cairo? In this first feature, Anna Roussillon, a French citizen raised in Egypt, offers an important counterpoint to the spectacular images captured in Tahrir Square. In January 2011, when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to Cairo’s streets, the director started filming her friend Farraj and his family, peasants in the Luxor Valley. For two years, their television screens allowed them to follow the country’s political upheavals, as it experienced an alternately enthusiastic and painful experiment with democracy. With wit, empathy and a powerful rapport with her subjects, the director makes us feel their hopes and disappointments. A superb lesson in humanity.”

Presented in collaboration with the CSN, the Association du cinéma indépendant pour sa diffusion and the Consulat général de France à Québec.

COUNTRY : FRANCE
YEAR : 2014
LANGUAGE : ARABIC
SUBTITLES : FRENCH, ENGLISH
RUNTIME : 111 MIN
PRODUCTION : KARIM AITOUNA, MALIK MENAÏ, THOMAS MICOULET
CINEMATOGRAPHY : ANNA ROUSSILLON
EDITING : SASKIA BERTHOD, CHANTAL PIQUET
SOUND : JEAN-CHARLES BASTION

CONTACT
(PRODUCTION)
THOMAS MICOULET
HAUTLESMAINS PRODUCTIONS
CONTACT@HAUTLESMAINSPRODUCTIONS.FR

 

ANNA ROUSSILLON

FILMOGRAPHY

PREMIER LONG MÉTRAGE - FIRST FEATURE

Film's Trailer