Swagger

To the sound of ethereal music, a drone flies over the buildings on a housing estate and takes us into Régis’ bedroom. With his bow-tie and flamboyant elegance, he dreams of being a fashion designer. Nadia wants to be an architect because “people who live in big cities (…) make big buildings but people don’t want to live in them”… With complicit directing that makes no attempt to conceal his inclination for fiction, Olivier Babinet uses the power of cinema to portray the perspectives of these teenagers he hung out with for almost 4 years during workshops in their school in Aulnay-sous-Bois outside Paris, where almost half the population lives below the poverty line. Their words in front of the camera alternate with their fantasies, which are dramatised. Simultaneously lucid about the difficulties and violence of the world around them and driven by their desires and dreams, they all have a determined swagger, a class and elegance as well as that bravado peculiar to teenagers…. A force that carries you aloft in life.

Éva Tourrent
Tënk artistic director