Premières solitudes

“I know who I want to be, but I don’t know who I will be” – in this moving film, Claire Simon gives teenagers attending a high school in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, a chance to open up. In alternating groups of two and three in the classroom, on park benches, on the bus and in stairwells, they exchange their thoughts and feelings about their complicated families, loneliness, financial worries, falling in love and the uncertainty of the future. Their reflective way of talking is the result of a process initiated with great intelligence: from interviews on the subject of solitude that Simon carried out as part of a school project to develop the script for a short fiction film with the school children, dialogues are created that could not be more truthful and function as a safe space for intimate feelings and fears. The hip-hop music by Stromae forms a fitting accompaniment. (bik)