L' héroïque lande - La frontière brûle

An hour into the film, five shots signal an abyss: kites in the sky, flown by a masked figure; fences constructed from two layers of iron and barbed wire, crossed by the muscular bodies of policemen; a child wanders and crosses a space of ambiguous constructions, the floor like burnt light; we hear an energetic electronic rhythm raging; a man speaks to the camera: “We are in Calais. Life is hard. We are naked, our clothes are dirty”—and raises his hand as a salutation. “The Jungle is the world of tomorrow,” said Klotz. How to film a territory that has often been represented as an abstraction, hiding humans behind complacent victimisation?
L’HÉROÏQUE LANDE – LA FRONTIÈRE BRÛLE refuses the predatorial approach of institutional reason and searches for the possibility of a new commons—which is also the possibility of cinema. The overwhelming potency of this radically humane gesture stands against the present time, afrms the tempestuous agility of life and the temporal materiality of landscape.
In CHANT POUR LA VILLE ENFOUIE, the Jungle became a landscape of ruin—where those removed from our future have the sovereignty of an unsurmountable and haunting past. They act upon us; they are now our collective landscape. (Cíntia Gil)

In the presence of Elisabeth Perceval and Nicolas Klotz.

Elisabeth Perceval, Nicolas Klotz:  PARIAH (2000), THE INJURY (2004), THE HUMAN QUESTION (2007), LOW LIFE (2011), THE HEROIC LAND (2017), FUGITIVE WHERE ARE YOU RUNNING? (2018), SAXIFRAGES, VIER WEISSE NÄCHTE (2021)