NON-FICTION | 5 EPISODES | 2024
Chronicles of a Paris suburb.
December 2020. Just outside the terminus of metro line 5, work has begun on the demolition of the Bobigny 2 shopping center, symbolizing the end of an era for a whole generation of residents who, in their youth, had made it a place to live and meet people. The construction site for the new district, known as “Cœur de ville”, has been awarded to the private developer COGEDIM, which promises “a far-reaching urban metamorphosis”. The contract was signed a few months earlier by the UDI, between the two rounds of the municipal elections, just before the party lost the mayoralty to the Communists.
Fabienne Laumonier and Thomas Guillaud-Bataille bring us the fruits of a three-year documentary immersion in the heart of Bobigny. In five mosaic episodes, they give voice to the city and the lives we lead there, its points of tension, its fault lines and its metamorphoses. Five harsh and sensitive tableaux, often funny, sometimes tragic, where intrigues and points of view intermingle. Five chapters that paint the portraits of residents attached to their city, often coming from elsewhere to write their history here, and also a certain History of France.