Film to be preceded by a prerecorded video introduction by Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau.
In this immersive documentary, a radical group of protesters forge a new way of living during a series of protests that rock Notre-Dame-des-Landes, France. Opposition to an airport expansion project in the 2010s gave rise to one of the most high-profile communities of protesters in the country’s history after a group of farmers invited citizens to squat on their land to defend it. Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s film — which won the 2024 Encounters award at the Berlinale — explores the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of the ‘Zone to Defend’ (ZAD) as they organize themselves into a collectivist community of dissent. Shot on Super 16mm with structuralist and durational rigour, scenes of fields plowed by horses, bread making, and a children’s birthday party are shown alongside violent clashes with police. With curiosity and solidarity, the directors bring viewers into the ZAD, giving insight into the daily labour of France’s most successful protest movement and the inherent challenges of taking a stance against corporations and the state. (Vivian Belick, TIFF) Official Selection: Berlinale, NYFF, Viennale.
TRT: 216 min, including intermission
"[The] rare documentary that seems to exist in symbiosis with the people and place it captures." —Leonardo Goi, The Film Stage
"An original artistic gesture which is perfectly in keeping with its subject-matter, like a lookout creating their own space and time." —Fabien Lemercier, Cineuropa
"Cailleau and Russell’s film can be taken as reviving the French tradition of peasant painting, finding contemporary images in the anarchist tradition of Pissarro, rather than the Catholic tradition of Millet." —Phil Coldiron, MUBI Notebook
"DIRECT ACTION strikingly allows all the tasks of the quotidian equal weight on the road to a better, freer world. The film isn’t just an infinitely pleasant experience—it’s also incredibly refreshing to see images of resistance that are hopeful, generative and optimistic, almost contagiously so." —Matilda Hague, Filmmaker Magazine
"Superlative... rather than telling a story, [DIRECT ACTION] describes a place. It insistently compels its viewer to consider the relationship between form and content, to reflect on directness and direction while delving into one of the most significant political struggles of contemporary Europe with disarming concreteness." —Erika Balsom, Film Comment
(Available to download after screening date)