Low Life

Als wären sich Robert Bresson und Jacques Tourneur im nächtlichen Lyon begegnet ... LOW LIFE ist das Porträt einer jungen Generation, die sich für Migranten ohne Papiere engagiert und damit gegen die eigene bürgerliche Herkunft rebelliert. Derweil zirkuliert ein Dokument in der Stadt, das mit einem todbringenden Fluch belegt ist. Es weist voraus auf eine Lehre, die das Regiegespann später in NOUS DISONS REVOLUTION ziehen wird: In einer repressiven Moderne hilft es, das Brauchtum aus der Zeit vor dem Kolonialismus zu mobilisieren. Der Teufel wäre hier möglicherweise Nicolas Sarkozy, der auf massive Demonstration von Staatsgewalt schwört. (Gerhard Midding)

In Anwesenheit von Elisabeth Perceval und Nicolas Klotz.

LOW LIFE is the film that announced a major rupture in the work of Nicolas Klotz and Elisabeth Perceval, leading them to uncover the poetic potentialities of fleeing society. It focuses on a group of students and asylum seekers as they bond over art, politics and solidarity while clashing with the blinding forces of the Anthropocene. Merging absolute rigour and mesmerising excess, with its characters echoing the melancholic drifters of Bresson and Garrel, the film confronted the law enforcement apparatus whose cynicism the duo had already targeted in their previous eforts; it then takes refuge in the realm of the night for the first time, where everybody is free. This is a true film about what it means to be young in dangerous times: its exclusive concerns are love and revolt, and the volatile drive which moves the heart into a state of intensity. More chilling than the panopticon itself and yet so generous in its desire to change the world, LOW LIFE ushered in a new, rawer creative phase for Klotz & Perceval. Poetry has never ceased to be the core of their cinema, yet after LOW LIFE it suddenly became more urgent, as if desperate to infiltrate the counter-images of a neglected people—the humanity of tomorrow. (Victor Morozov)

In the presence of Elisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz.

Elisabeth Perceval, Nicolas Klotz: PARIA (2000), LA BLESSURE (2004), LA QUESTION HUMAINE (2007), LOW LIFE (2011), L’HÉROÏQUE LANDE (2017), FUGITIF OÙ COURS-TU ? (2018), SAXIFRAGES, QUATRE NUITS BLANCHES (2021)