This is the story of a team of 40 agents facing 4,000 job seekers at a job centre in the Parisian suburbs. Samia, Corinne, Thierry, Zuleika must support and monitor, bring in the numbers, obey policy guidelines and communication injunctions, and find job offers while none is to be found. Will their strong sense of humor save them from the Kafkaian world they work in?
Do you have to be miserable to be funny? More than sixty comedians—including stand-ups, writers, actors, and directors from the US, Canada, and abroad—take on this question, sharing anecdotes and insights with lively enthusiasm.
Magical, autonomous, all-powerful… Artificial intelligences feed our dreams as well as our nightmares. But while tech giants promise the advent of a new humanity, the reality of their production remains totally hidden. While data centers are concreting landscapes and drying up rivers, millions of workers around the world are preparing the billions of data that will feed the voracious algorithms of Big Tech, at the cost of their mental and emotional health. They are hidden in the belly of AI. Could they be the collateral damage of the ideology of “Longtermism” that has been brewing in Silicon Valley for several years?
L'Amour vache
Film from Andrew Morgan. The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.
Tokyo work culture's most compelling and complex protagonist; the Salaryman. A nameless, voiceless, over-worked and under-valued cog in the labour pool, expected to compromise home and social lives. Late nights and intense drinking sessions leave many of them passed out in the city streets. This slick, incisive documentary raises questions around the ethics of our global working practices in a capitalist society.
Le Siècle des couturières
Documentary about the Radium Dial Company and the aftereffects experienced by its workers from repeated exposure to radioactive paint.
In 1984, eleven miners entrenched themselves underground to protest for better working conditions in the mining village of Almaden in southern Spain. The strike, deep within the toxic mercury mine, lasted for eleven long days, during which the whole village showed its solidarity with the men protesting underground. The mine was the heart of Almaden, around which everything revolved – until it longer existed. The mercury mine was closed for good at the beginning of the 21st century. As a consequence, the area has experienced mass unemployment and slow decline.
Matisse & Lydia
Women workers stand up to the toxic flower industry in Colombia.
L'Autre pays
L’Hôpital des Premiers Jours
A documentary film about the Brazilian town of Toritama, the self-proclaimed capital of jeans. The workers of the city’s self-managed small businesses only get one real break from their self-exploiting lives in the textile business: the annual Carnival.
The authorized documentary celebrating the film that redefined Hollywood, 50 years after its premiere. Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with acclaimed Hollywood directors alongside Steven Spielberg, top shark scientists, and conservationists, the film uncovers the behind-the-scenes chaos and how the film launched the summer blockbuster, inspired a new wave of filmmakers, and paved the way for shark conservation that continues today.
In Texas, construction workers face the deadliest conditions in the country. This documentary follows three immigrant families who are rising up to seek justice and equality in an industry rife with exploitation.
In Buenos Aires a group of acclaimed dancers create the first Contemporary National Company of Dance under their collective leadership. This is the story of four talented dancers, Ernesto, Bettina, Victoria and Pablo, along six years of their journey. We follow their lives, we attend their rehearsals and performances in the emblematic building of the National Library, along with their premiere and backstage in the historical National Theatre of Cervantes. They expose their dreams as dancers, individuals and members of our society, as we observe the fulfilment of their biggest dream: the demand of a National Dance Law. Amazing choreographies, beautiful folklore songs and original Latin-American contemporary music reveal the beauty of dance becoming life.
Trop chaud pour travailler
In barely a century, French peasants have seen their world profoundly turned upside down. While they once made up the vast majority of the country, today they are only a tiny minority and are faced with an immense challenge: to continue to feed France. From the figure of the simple tenant farmer described by Emile Guillaumin at the beginning of the 20th century to the heavy toll paid by peasants during the Great War, from the beginnings of mechanization in the inter-war period to the ambivalent figure of the peasant under the Occupation, From the unbridled race to industrialization in post-war France to the realization that it is now necessary to rethink the agricultural model and invent the agriculture of tomorrow, the film looks back at the long march of French peasants.
After two months of a hard-fought strike, accompanied by a day-and-night occupation of the premises, Jeune Afrique's workers were the victims of a court order authorizing their CEO, Bechir Ben Yahmed, to have them removed by the police. If they resisted, they risked falling foul of the law against rioters. To avoid the African comrades being deported from France, the strikers decided to leave. But before leaving, they organized a demonstration of solidarity with hundreds of journalists from the traditional and revolutionary press.