Éric Baudelaire, a French artist and filmmaker (a 2015 MATRIX artist), describes his new film, made by twenty middle school students in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris: “We worked with the students in a very open-ended manner, with two guiding principles. The first was that I wasn’t there to teach them anything. The second was that we would make a film that starts as a film about them, slowly becoming a film made with them, and eventually, after four years, it would end up as a film by them.” The resulting work is both intimate and illuminating as the young filmmakers debate what a film can be and what kind of film they’d like to make, and go on to depict their lives, interviewing a neighbor or family member, talking directly to the camera, or discussing among themselves their daily experience of racism and discrimination. Together they imagine a new type of collaborative film; in the end, as makers, they are empowered.

Made in collaboration with the students of the cinema group at Dora Maar Middle School: Anida Ait Abdesselam, Ambrine Belarbi, Assia Chaihab, Melinda Damis, Alyssa David, Dafa Diallo, Océane El Faqir, Sabou Fofana, Gaëtan Gichtenaere, Lina Ikhlef, Bintou Kamate, Guy-Yanis Kodjo, Ibrahima Konate, Basile Leignel, Gabriel-David Pop, Aissé Sacko, Rabyatou Saho, Mohammed Samassa, Fatimata Sarr, Manelle Zigh.