Selection : French Feature films 2018
Ash and Ember
De cendres et de braises
Manon Ott
Les Mureaux, a council estate 25 miles away from Paris, located next to the Renault car factory where a lot of African workers were hired in the sixties. Today, who is living there? With the modern job insecurity and the memories of past social struggles, what is left of the working class?
"In here the center of things are the peripheries, and we are inventing liberated territories", sang Hamé in 2009. Manon Ott directed a film keeping at bay the miserabilism and common talk that usually pervades films depicting the banlieue. Embark on a picaresque journey in just a few square miles, photographed in a graphite black and white, that builds with ease a bridge between the 60's social struggles and our decade's gangster rap. Swaying between the various characters without labeling or classing them, the film aims at defining new poetics of speech, be it a personal, a militant, a disillusional, a romantic or a musical speech. Akosh S.'s free jazz offers an aesthetic counterpoint to the atmospheres and places shot, and goes back to the often-forgotten roots of this musical genre: a protest chant, a chant for freedom, a chant that sets you free. (Victor Bournerias)
- Screenplay
- Manon Ott
- Photography
- Manon Ott, Gregory Cohen
- Sound
- Grégory Cohen
- Music
- Akosh S
- Editing
- Pascale Hannoyer
- Production
- TS productions, Céline Loiseau, Flammes
Eurocks One+One award
CONTACT:
Docks 66, Aleksandra Cheuvreux
contact@docks66.com
Manon Ott is a filmmaker and a researcher in the fields of cinema and social sciences. She teaches cinema, photography and social sciences in university. She also participates in several film collectives and writes for cinema magazines. CM/SF : Yu (2008), Narmada (2012 co-directed with Gregory Cohen).
