Farida runs a three-star hotel in Nîmes. At the end of 2020, she welcomed a unique clientele. Homeless people, migrants, and women who were victims of violence found shelter there during the health crisis.

Over the course of successive lockdowns, the hotel became a micro-society in which everyone had to learn to live with each other, regardless of their history and differences.

Between interventions by social workers, mutual aid, and waiting, a picture of emergency accommodation began to emerge.

MARIE-ELISE BEYNE

Marie-Elise Beyne spent part of her childhood in New Caledonia and her teenage years in the new town of Cergy, which was then under construction. It was there that she undoubtedly developed her taste for ordinary landscapes.

At Saint Charles (a faculty of fine arts affiliated with Paris 1), in addition to the traditional curriculum that gave her access to art history, she remembers meeting director Joseph Morder, who taught students how to ‘tinker’ with films in Super 8, his favourite medium. He undoubtedly influenced her approach to making her first short fiction films.

After internships and then assistant directing on feature films, TV movies and television programmes, Marie-Elise began working on documentaries. Producer Jacques Kirsner entrusted her with the direction of two films: one for France 5 on the history of French diplomacy, specifically how the Quai d’Orsay has evolved over the centuries, and the other for Arte’s Thema series, which examines the social causes of excessive debt.

At that time, directors such as Guy Girard, Eric Pittard and Xavier Villetard shared with her their love of storytelling through music and the pleasure of working with light. Their unique approaches to history and to portraying musicians and writers allowed her to discover creative documentary filmmaking. She continued her education during a writing residency at the documentary school in Lussas, where she developed her film Revoir Cergy.

Today, after several courses at the Gobelins School, she is also developing this work in photography, with the suburbs still her preferred subject matter.