Paris Stalingrad

Sélection Officielle « TIFF Docs » – Festival International du Film de Toronto (Canada) – 2019
Sélection Officielle « Compétition Française » – Cinéma du Réel (France) – 2019

Summer 2016, Paris, refugees are camping in the Stalingrad district while waiting to regularize their situation. Hind Meddeb and Thim Naccache film the daily life and geography of Stalingrad district, a frontier-space in the heart of Paris. A physical labyrinth added to the bureaucratic labyrinth already in place–the city turns away. Controls, round-ups, police raids, fencing. How to make room, be collective? How can you live in a space that prevents you from existing? The film maps out the ordeal: water points, dark corners, isolated parks, ping-pong tables to cook on. Just next to the tennis courts, the refugees take a rest while the players continue training, and awake as nearby joggers exercise. Refugees try to survive in the street, a collective emerges and coexistence settles in. From out of the group, we hear the voice of Souleymane, a young refugee from Darfour whose poems mingle with the filmmaker’s voice-over. Souleymane walks around, wanders off, gets lost, re-appears and talks. As the film tracks the itineraries in Paris, another journey takes shape: fragmented stories evoke Libya, Vintimille, Calais. Echoes of a shared journey, whereas Paris repels and divides. From Stalingrad to La Chapelle, from the Eole garden to the city ring roads, bodies end up isolated on the city outskirts. Souleymane leaves the group, the camera follows him, a solitary escape. The collective breaks up, disappears from the frame, but the film exists as the memory of a place, Stalingrad, where it was a matter of surviving together.

Consult the film’s website: paris-stalingrad.film

View the trailer Press kit