Nous

Quer durch Paris und seine Außenbezirke verläuft von Nord nach Süd die Schnellbahnstrecke RER B. Sie führt zu Hochhaussiedlungen und dörflichen Vororten, in Industriezonen und Waldgebiete. Sie dient Diop als Leitlinie, entlang derer sie Impressionen einer multikulturellen Migrationsgesellschaft auffädelt, in der die Umrisse der französischen Klassengesellschaft unverdrossen deutlich zutage treten. Das „Wir“ des Titels bildet sich aus und zerfällt zugleich in viele kleine Gruppenperspektiven, denen Diop mit ebenso vielen unterschiedlichen Zugängen zu ihrem Material gerecht wird. Ein dokumentaranalytisches Essayhomemovie. (Alexandra Seitz)

A black man climbing a letter, setting up four French flags for some official holiday. An old white woman recalling former days, when she met her husband, an immigrant worker from Italy. A visit to the memorial site of the Drancy detention camp during the Nazi occupation. Glimpses from a home video back in the days when the mother of Alice Diop, director of this award-winning documentary at this year’s Berlinale, was still alive.
NOUS is a cautious, apparently unconstrained filmic inquiry led by the question of what holds a community together, a community that seems divided by many things. Inspired by the logbook “Les Passagers du Roissy-Express“ by French author François Maspero written 30 years ago, Diop roams the banlieues of Paris alongside the RER B city train. French history and private episodes, the ephemeral and the eternal, everything has a place.
The beauty of this roadtrip is the way it lets the images talk to us. NOUS is not a research project on the missing unity of a nation, but a claim to constitute what is called NOUS/WE by drawing lines between the protagonists of this area. The unseen is rendered visible, with Diop herself very much part of this. (Gunnar Landsgesell)

Alice Diop: LES SÉNÉGALAISES ET LA SÉNÉGAULOISE (2007), LA MORT DE DANTON (2011), VERS LA TENDRESSE (2016, K). LA PERMANENCE (2016), RER B (2017, K)