Pascal Després

The film is a travelogue of sorts. Ostrovsky’s personal family footage meets the archives of Soviet propaganda footage. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my reminiscences of the Cold War era.

The comedy in this lively film barely conceals its darker, more serious undertones as it chronicles a young Algerian's eye-opening introduction to the joys and travails of being an immigrant in Paris. Alilo has left his home to pick up an important suitcase for his employer. Unfortunately, he has lost the Parisian address. Fortunately, his cousin Mok, emigrated there several years before with his middle-class family before and is able to act as a guide. Mok, an aspiring rap singer, comes from a middle-class family, but chooses to live on his own in the dilapidated deteriorating 18th district, known as 'Moskova.' Mok characterizes the place as a haven for artists and intellectuals, but it is plainly just a Third World slum filled with tightly knit and colorful neighbors. Mok and Alilo have many interesting, some tragedy-tinged adventures over the five days it takes them to find the suitcase.

Джамиль – серьезный парень, живущий и работающий на окраине Парижа. Однако после того, как его брата Нордина, торговца героином, который и сам «сидит» на своем товаре, по ошибке убивает полиция, Джамиль присоединяется к беспорядкам, устроенным разгневанными друзьями, чтобы отомстить за трагическую смерть Нордина.

Mise-en-scène, at the Comédie-Française, of La Vie de Galilée by Bertolt Brecht. This is the last staging by Antoine Vitez.

Two childhood friends who have not seen each other for a long time decide to meet again. They talk and look for what could have caused their estrangement: words pronounced in a certain way, an intonation etc. Very quickly, an argument begins and turns into a settlement of accounts.