Press clips
“… The film begins, on a winter evening, with the actors' arrival in the decommissioned military hut that the TNS (1) is using while its premises are being renovated. The story is that of a night during which the students will present to each other the results of their investigations in Strasbourg and try to make them into a show. This night - recreated by and for the cinema, of course, a dreamed night, intercut with arguments, fits of laughter, magnificent or outlandish ideas, empty moments, divisions and reunions - forms the film's screenplay.
This screenplay doesn't tell the story of class 30 of the TNS, the "subject" of the film, nor that of Strasbourg, "subject" of the students' fifteen investigations, but the story of democracy. The story of "how we do something together". From the creation of a collective group - bodies, words and imagination. Singing and dancing, food and sleep also have their role to play in it. Rituals too. It gradually falls into place, not at all with the flat symbolism of a demonstration but by building up singular and different characters.
We're still close enough to the stage to think of Brecht in this parable of the community that, beneath its raw documentary aspects, leaves enough room for everyone's inventiveness (including the director's) to escape the hellish paradox of this commission: without ignoring the obligation to show each student "equally", the internal dynamics of this night offer each one of them a place. They are not equal, they are unique and respected as such by the film. Nicolas Philibert's great talent and his great respect for people - those he films and those who watch his film - have enabled him to model this imaginary object from the stuff of reality with its light, merry and moving forms, baptised Qui sait? ”
Jean-Michel Frodon, Le Monde - September 2, 1999
“They're used to having lines, a thread to follow, a master. Still fragile, the young students at the Strasbourg National Theatre were therefore a little confused when Nicolas Philibert arrived among them because, as with In the Land of the Deaf or with the inmates in Every Little Thing, the filmmaker was empty-handed. He asked them to take a fresh look at their city. And to come back with an idea, a sound, an image, a memory... In short, a pretext to perform together. Thrown into the real world, with everything that may seem violent and "clichéd" about it, these young apprentice actors could have been out of their depth. They are surprisingly spot on. The director has managed to destabilize them without any sadism and give them a proud fragility. And so, before our eyes, an approach to reality is built up that calls to mind the research of numerous contemporary visual artists. Involuntarily, Philibert has overturned a world and transformed this group of students into a shimmering constellation, full of promises and hope in the future. That of the theatre and of each one of them.”
Aden - September 2, 1999
“Unity of place and time with a minimal plot: at school, one night, the students - actors and stage designers - gather together to fine-tune the basics of a show on Strasbourg. Discussions, moments of silence, asides and diversions, confrontations, looks, music, living tableaux, puppets, small shapes in which bits of the show are sketched out. Moments of grace, boredom, flight or rest, the wager is taken to shoot live to capture everything, to record the time spent searching throughout the night, time that leads to tiredness, obscurity and things that escape all that: the sparkling light of a look, the revelation of a voice, the freshness of an improvisation. The film focuses on trust, tenderness and lightness, on things that are spoken about in passing… And so it will be a question of storks, Delteil (2), marriage, concentration camps, truth and commitment. There will be accordion music, dancing, singing, smiles, sulking and the lively, full laughter of Mounia that bursts forth and imposes itself, without crushing or cracking the warm cohesion of the group. For, at the end of the film, this is what comes forth: a rational intimacy, an attentive ear; a passion shared and this examination of the word "together" that culminates discreetly and magnificently in the final scene of sleep, waking and joy.”
Catherine Soullard, Etudes magazine – September 1999
(1) TNS: Théâtre National de Strasbourg
(2) Joseph Delteil (1894-1978): poet, essayist, novelist, author of around forty books, an original and anti-conformist figure in French literature.
