La permanence

In the shabby consulting room of a clinic in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, a doctor and psychologist treat refugees and migrants from all over the world, who have neither health insurance nor a residence permit. The traumatic stories of those seeking help are listened to, as much as their physical and mental suffering is attended to. The situations that Diop films with a static camera, frontally yet discreetly, create empathy. The director succeeds in telling of the daily precarious life of migrants without leaving the small room, as well as transmitting that the state and society are responsible for this misery and that the path to recovery needs political solutions.