“Douce France“: When young people of diversity appropriate their territories

Rebuilding links between neighborhoods, cities and countryside © Elzévir Films

By: Emmanuelle Bastide

2 min

In 2019, EuropaCity, a mega-complex project in the Paris region which was to bring together hotels, shops and leisure facilities was definitively abandoned.

With an investment of 3 billion euros, the promise of 10,000 direct jobs and 30 million visitors per year, the center represented a promise for the economic activity of the territory.

Publicity

However, it was contested from its launch.

While Ile-de-France loses 1,400 hectares of agricultural land each year, this leisure park based on mass consumption which plans to concrete an additional 80 hectares of land seems, for some, from another era.

How to develop the territories and reconcile economic activities, leisure and agriculture?

What role for the inhabitants?

How can we get young people from neighborhoods never consulted to question our consumption patterns and our choices in society?

This is the whole point of Geoffrey Couanon's documentary “Douce France” 

Geoffrey Couanon

, animator, educator in working-class neighborhoods and former farm worker.

Director of the documentary 

Douce France

, released in cinemas on June 16, 2021

Jennyfer

, a former high school student in Villepinte in the Parisian suburbs, she participated in Geoffrey Couanon's documentary,

Douce France

.

Musical programming:

On what foot to dance

- Zoufris Maracas

Temontou

 - Flavia Coelho 

Rebuilding links between neighborhoods, cities and countryside © Elzévir Films

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