Banliyö - Banlieue

Up to Down

2019

Naples. Home of the unbowed, of madmen and paupers. A city that refuses to lick anyone's boots, let alone stoop to pretense. This documentary bad trip takes us on a tour of the city's dismal suburbs and into the homes of the marginalized and rejected: a man, a girl, and a masked boxer - three protagonists yearning for something else, although they're not quite sure what. (Karlovy Vary Film Festival 2019)

Who Killed Fourth Ward?

1978

Originally founded as Freedman’s Town after the Civil War, The Fourth Ward is one of the oldest and most culturally significant black communities in Houston, Texas. In the 1970s, the city along with big business interests planned to redevelop the Fourth Ward in order to revitalize the dilapidated real estate and freshen the image of downtown Houston. The price of progress in this case would be the removal of many poor black families. The film explores a complex series of encounters with elected city officials, businessmen and the people of Fourth Ward in order to better understand how a city like Houston works. Who makes the decisions about where resources are spent and so determines the growth and wealth of the community.

Pour de vrai, pour de faux

2015

We

2022

An urban train link, the RER B, crosses Paris and its outskirts from north to south. A journey within indistinct spaces known as inner cities and suburbs. Several portraits, all individual pieces that form a whole. We.

De Quoi J'Me Mêle ! Banlieues, Guerre Et Paix

1995

From the “integration model” to the “Islamist fanatic”, France fantasizes about these children of immigrants who grew up with it. Like every month “What I’m Meddling With!” presents portraits, the result of an in-depth investigation, to give a face to today's questions. The program, broadcast in the thematic evening of the Franco-German channel Arte, is made up of 2 ambivalent documentaries: "Les Lumières De La Zone" and "Les Soldats De Dieu" followed by debates.

Splendour of the Heavens

1962

A film about astronomy which also happens to show views of the ancient city of Winchester, before focussing on a particular house in the suburbs with its own observatory.

Madiakho m'a dit

2025

Portrait of Penge

1964

Film about the town of Penge featuring local personalities, housing, shopping, traffic and the Penge formation dancers.

Orazio vola

2024

On the outskirts of Augusta lives Orazio: a mechanic by vocation. Due to countless misadventures he cannot open a workshop. To give vent to his anger, he transforms mopeds and scooters into “glittered motorized umbrellas.” Glitter helmets and hyper-colored decorations dress him up; thus begins his passion for “light” understood as a superior force.

93, la belle rebelle

2010

Pescenopolis

2003

Pescenica is an old industrial suburb of Zagreb. As a satirical depiction of Croatia's recent politics, it has been declared independent republic. What's it like there today? Over a year, the film crew was combing streets, avenues, parks and backyards, focusing on the lives of four Pescenica inhabitants: its self-proclaimed president, a teacher in a Roma school, a cleaning lady in a film distribution company and a young stage director. All that in order to portray Pescenopolis, the film's protagonist that floats between mud and clouds.

Council House

2008

The film takes place in a Parisian suburb and brings us into the closest possible contact with the people who live here and takes us into the privacy of their lives. A series of personal accounts and shots of the decorated interiors of apartments and houses with no hint as to where we are, no names. No stigma attached, no label given. For these are not the subject of the film, which seeks instead to give a face and a voice – a sort of private landscape – to a space that has come to represent all that is standardized and anonymous.

Young Solitude

2018

Claire Simon portrays an important time for any individual, from 16 to 18 years of age. Set in the Paris suburbs in high school (for those lucky enough to go), teenagers chat after and even during class, sitting in the hallway or outside on a bench, looking at the city below them.

Hovsjö on fire

2010

A problem area burdened by burning cars, stone throwing and crime. This is how the district of Hovsjö in Södertälje, Sweden, is often described. An image that is further reinforced when one day the school burns down, just when the autumn term is about to begin. But in Hovsjö there is also something completely different...

ZONA/

2020

Milan, western suburbs. In one of the nine districts ("zone") of the city, the students of the "Rosa Luxemburg" trade school meditate over the meaning of living in the suburbs. And they do so using their smartphones, filming their days and looking for a common thread among their lives. Crossing and mixing video-diaries, documentary shooting and fictional scenes, the project struggles to take a definite shape: every character and perspective channels the tale in a different direction, escaping from linear narrative lines and bringing us to some kind of archipelago.