Le transformateur

A documentary about to police situation in France after the institution of a prolonged state of emergency. From the anger of the police to that of the victims of their violence, through the words of activists and inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods, everyone expresses here a moment of unease in the face of order and its maintenance.

Les Feux de la Saint-Jean

On August 1, 1942, a 22-year-old Mexican American man was stabbed to death at a party. To white Los Angelenos, the murder was just more proof that Mexican American crime was spiraling out of control. The police fanned out across LA, netting 600 young Mexican American suspects. Almost all those taken into custody were wearing the distinctive uniform of their generation: Zoot Suits. The tragic murder and the injustice of the trial that followed, coupled with sensational news coverage of both, fanned the flames of the racial hostility that was already running rife in the city. Within months of the verdict, Los Angeles was in the grip of some of the worst violence in its history.

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement.

The film features emblematic figures of the fight against police brutality in France: Ramata Dieng, sister of Lamine Dieng, Assa Traoré, sister of Adama Traoré, as well as Mahamadou Camara, brother of Gaye Camara, Farid El Yamni, brother of Wissam El Yamni, and Awa Gueye, sister of Babacar Gueye. The film also includes rare intimate interviews of young men of color from 'Banlieues' (working class neighborhoods) who expose how they have endured police repression throughout their lives and how it has impacted them.

Forfulgt af politiet?

They are police officers, they are homosexuals. How to assume one's sexual orientation within an institution little known for its tolerance? Through a series of portraits of men and women, the film collects answers and follows in the footsteps of FLAG !, the association that a few have founded to fight internal discrimination. More visible than elsewhere, the difficulties these police officers face speak of a society that is changing or that must change.

After the Battle of Algiers, France and its army exported, as true experts, anti-subversive methods to Latin America and the United States in the 1960s. After more than a year of investigation in Argentina , in Chile, Brazil, the United States and France, the director collected, sometimes under the cover of a hidden camera, recorded conversations, the exclusive testimonies of the main protagonists. From General Aussaresses to former Minister of the Armed Forces Pierre Messmer, including General Reynaldo Bignone (head of the military junta in Argentina from 1982 to 1984), General Albano Harguindéguy, General Manuel Contreras, and Generals John Johns and Carl Bernard, this investigation gives us a hidden reality of the country of Human Rights.

Suzy vs Gros Loup - Menace sur les rails

As anger and resentment grow in the face of social inequalities, many citizens-led protests are being repressed with an ever-increasing violence. In this documentary, David Dufresne gathers a panel of citizens to question, exchange and confront their views on the social order and the legitimacy of the use of force by the State.

On May 25th, 2020, Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, murdered George Floyd, a black man, by driving his knee into George's neck for 8 minutes and 45 seconds until he died. This film chronicles New York City's overwhelming response.

A girl from St. Petersburg walks around protest-ridden Moscow, talking to riot police and believing that sooner or later they will go over to the side of the demonstrators. An 18-year-old student of a St. Petersburg college introduces herself as Alice and tells about herself that from the age of four she lived in an orphanage and in foster families. In Moscow, Alisa, for whom this is the first rally in her life, walks along the police cordons and looks under the OMON helmet. "Under the mask you can't see, are you even human?"

The personal stories lived by the Uncle, the Father and the Son, respectively, form a tragic experience that is drawn along a line in time. This line is comparable to a crease in the pages of the family album, but also to a crack in the walls of the paternal house. It resembles the open wound created when drilling into a mountain, but also a scar in the collective imaginary of a society, where the idea of salvation finds its tragic destiny in the political struggle. What is at the end of that line? Will old war songs be enough to circumvent that destiny?

Banlie.ue

Police et Polissons

Nahel, un an après : la révolte étouffée

On march 25, 2023, I'm filming from within the ecological protest against water reservoirs taking place in Sainte-Soline, France. The police repression is so violent that after the event, I have repressed many of the experiences of the protest. The images I captured retrace my path within the protest and give me back my memories.

A fragmented portrait of a moment, a person, and a place, seen through the subjective memories of a young Black girl, Imani, and a rookie police officer, David, who both have wildly different recollections of the same fateful moment in a corner store that will leave their lives altered forever.

A gangster escapes jail and quickly makes plans to continue his criminal ways elsewhere, but a determined inspector is closing in.

Former Special Forces officer Frank Martin will deliver anything to anyone for the right price, and his no-questions-asked policy puts him in high demand. But when he realizes his latest cargo is alive, it sets in motion a dangerous chain of events. The bound and gagged Lai is being smuggled to France by a shady American businessman, and Frank works to save her as his own illegal activities are uncovered by a French detective.