David Dufresne, "A country that keeps itself wise" in a word, a gesture, a silence

David Dufresne, director of the documentary “A country that stands wise”.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

6 min

More than a shocking film, A Country Who Keeps Wise turns out to be a film posing a shocking question for democracy in France.

Director David Dufresne shows documentary images of police violence worthy of an authoritarian state on the big screen and thus opens a debate on democracy in France.

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The toll is heavy, very heavy.

We are talking about 2,500 wounded, 25 wounded and 5 hands torn off over the past two years, during the numerous confrontations between part of the population and the police.

But the film is not limited to yellow vests.

The humiliation of young people by the police in Mantes-la-Jolie and the Alexandre Benalla affair, a close collaborator of President Emmanuel Macron disguised as a police officer hitting a demonstrator, are also part of the essential question posed by the film: the state of rights and democracy also violated and injured?  

David Dufresne, "A country that keeps itself wise" in a word, a gesture, a silence

There are some things in common between 

 and

.

Both are first films with a strong desire to mark the minds of an entire country and to change things.

Ladj Ly, now “the man with the camera”, began his career with

videos

 denouncing and alerting on social networks the abuses of the police in his district of Bosquets in Montfermeil.

A police blunder, filmed in October 2008, where cops hit a young man in handcuffs, will be the first time that police officers will be sentenced following a video.

But David Dufresne goes much further than 

.

Ladj Ly's film had aroused enthusiasm at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival and among many young people in the suburbs.

Dufresne's documentary is supported by the prestigious Cannes selection La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, but is already shaking the whole of society to power.

David Dufresne adopts

 a style that is also dazzling, raw and realistic,

for

, but alternates raw and brutal images with very calm analyzes provided by witnesses and specialists.

Historically, the wise observer of questions around the maintenance of order and launcher of alerts "Hello @Place_Beauvau" on Twitter explains his approach as a need to monitor those who watch us.

And where

turns out almost like a film reconciling between the police and the populations in the suburbs, David Dufresne opens wide the debate on the police violence shown on the big screen as arbitrary, blind and completely disproportionate.

RFI

David Dufresne

It's a nice point.

There is a cousinhood.

In

, the film changes as soon as the police officers who carried out an operation that went wrong understand that they have been filmed.

The basis of

 is to say that today, police operations are filmed.

From there, we can document, observe, discuss, in the noble sense of the term.

So obviously there is a connection.

 takes place in Montfermeil, in the neighborhoods.

is as much in city centers with yellow vests as in Mantes-la-Jolie with high school students, since the film takes as its title this famous sentence of a policeman who films 151 kneeling high school students in Mantes-la-Jolie, in the Parisian suburbs, saying: " 

.

We took that sentence and turned it around, saying:

.

So obviously there are connections between the two films.

And these links, it is the question of the role of the police force, its management, its nature, its limits, its possibilities, its legitimacy.

And the police, and more precisely the police institution, would be wrong to sweep aside the debate which is in the process of mounting.   

You've already seen a lot of previews all over the place.

What was the reaction of those who contributed to the film and viewers

For those who contributed to the film, you have to ask the people concerned what they thought.

For some, it's a liberation, for others a moment that rekindles hard times.

But, roughly speaking, the previews have revealed all these people raising their hands to ask questions, to testify, to question the police.

With a lot of diversity and a lot of richness.

Much more than you think.

And that is the strength of cinema, a place where we go together, live an experience and then share it.   

The fight of the yellow vests took place and still takes place in the street.

Your film, is it a kind of

return

The device of the film is really the conversation, the fact of discussing, of putting things down.

In a passionate way, but not in a vehement way or in a way where people cut each other off and yell at each other.

We are not at all in a news channel writing.

We are in something more weighed.

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