Cauri Films

My name is Hélène and 1952 was not an easy year for me. First, because my parents decided to leave Montpellier for Paris but without taking me and my big brother Michel along with them. Why, I don't know... The fact remains that I had to leave the south for Lille, in the North, where my grandmother Yaya (her true name is Alice but this is the way call her) and my grandfather Georges were living. What I disliked most was that Yaya had a preference for Michel and that Granddaddy was too grumpy. In Lille I also got very upset when pupils at the catholic school I attended told me I was... Jewish. Jewish? I didn't even know that Jews even existed. And when I knew better about them (Michel was more informed than I was), what a shock it was when I learned that my two other grandparents had been sent to a concentration during the war. A little too much for a little girl like me. A sure thing is that I will never forget the year 1952, the year when I was seven...

In a big isolated house, Mikael, a musician, is composing a psalm. A young woman, Linda, comes to retreive a suitcase belonging to Sébastien, her companion and Mikael's friend. It contains hundreds of photographs from all over the world. While he is travelling, Sébastien has asked Linda to organise the photographs with a view to an exhibition. Mikael invites Linda to reside with him. She accepts. That is the heart of the film – an intertwining of photographs which, juxtaposed by Linda, begin to speak. In parallel with this, Linda receives cassette-letters from Sébastien. A subtle relationship is established between Linda, the young debutante, and Mikael, the man of experience. Mikael goes off to direct his psalm, Linda stays alone. The walls become covered with photographs – wall of happiness, wall of misery – the fight between Good and Evil. Linda learns of the accidental death of Sébastien and stays alone.

The film recounts the resistance of these men detained for eighteen years in Tazmamart , a former barracks that became the symbol of Morocco 's dark years, as the conditions of those who were imprisoned there were so inhuman and arbitrary.

A documentary about the making of Jean Renoir's film The River (1951)