Writer
A man applying for refugee status in Japan was told falsely that, "If you work in the decontamination effort, your visa will be extended," following the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. "ALARA" was created based on this incident.
Himself
Filmed in his home in Paris one late summer, the philosopher and political figure Antonio Negri takes as a starting point a short story — a parable written by Marine Hugonnier — and transforms it into a political hypothesis. It is the story of a community of children who live in roofless houses in a world where two suns shine permanently. When an eclipse is about to take place, the children get scared. They are terrified as they do not know the darkness, they’ve never seen the stars. To cope with their fear, they decide to burn their houses to generate light. From there Antonio Negri weaves anecdotes, evokes Alexis de Tocqueville and Saint Francis of Assisi, protests against biopolitics and formalises arguments which reveal his unconditional engagement for activism, absolute democracy, the need to recreate communities, and his restless quest to find joy in the heart of “the multitude”.
What does it mean to be leftist today? The film tries to answer this essential question by interviewing great figures of contemporary thought. From the disappearance of the USSR to the latest financial crisis, Après la gauche is a journey through 20 years that have upset the left, but it's - above all - an act of resistance.
Self
Marx Reloaded is a cultural documentary that examines the relevance of German socialist and philosopher Karl Marx's ideas for understanding the global economic and financial crisis of 2008-09. The crisis triggered the deepest global recession in 70 years and prompted the US government to spend more than 1 trillion dollars in order to rescue its banking system from collapse. Today the full implications of the crisis in Europe and around the world still remain unclear. Nevertheless, should we accept the crisis as an unfortunate side-effect of the free market? Or is there another explanation as to why it happened and its likely effects on our society, our economy and our whole way of life?
A narrator recounts the experiences of a film-making team who are making a film about becoming lost.
Himself
Few intellectuals have experienced as much admiration and hatred as Antonio Negri. His international best-selling book, Empire, a critical analysis of the new global economy coauthored with Michael Hardt, was hailed as a new manifesto for the 21st century, and turned Negri into a leading spokesperson for the international anti-globalization movement. Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends profiles the controversial life and times of this important moral and political philosopher, militant, prisoner, refugee, and so-called "enemy of the state." It traces his roots in the radical left-wing movements in Italy during the 60s and 70s, illustrated through incredible archival footage of strikes, factory occupations, terrorist actions, violent street confrontations, and government trials of dissidents. During these tumultuous decades Negri spent ten years in prison and fourteen years in Parisian exile, where he contributed to philosophical debates with authors such as Gilles Deleuze.
