MY LIFE IN FRANCE

Standing in front of a map of the world hanging on the blackboard, the teacher asks :- « And you, Emmanuel, which country do you come from?»- « Pigalle.» answers the little boy.- « No, Pigalle is here, in Paris, but you come from another country… » she insists.- « Hotel… Hotel.» repeats Emmanuel. In a first movement, the frame of the film, is the classroom, the school…. And the harsh but illuminated journey of a small boy, anxious to understand, to learn and to belong to a community. The open doors of the Republican school. In a second movement, the reverse shot of the film, is the hotel room, and the difficult life of a single mother and her two children, Emmanuel and Martina, asylum seekers… The closed door of a hotel, on an «invitation to leave the country ». Following closely Emmanuel and Martina, the film builds itself around this opposition, shot/reverse-shot, on these two contradictory and incoherent movements, that … of the illusion of France as a « land of asylum».