Sophie Bruneau

Arbres is the story of the Tree and trees. It begins with the Origins and then embarks upon a journey through the world of the tree and the trees of the world. The film reveals the huge differences and slight similarities between the Tree and Man, investigating the fascinating idea that, amongst plants, the tree fulfils the role played by man in the animal kingdom.

We know what labour wreaks on the body, but what less visible imprint does it leave on the unconscious? The nights of twelve dreamers – sometimes recounted in front of the camera, sometimes with a voice-over that accompanies shots of office buildings or urban worksites – reveal how the capitalist system invades the modern-day psyche. Long shots of edifices with smooth surfaces and sheer edges instil a deceptive gentleness. Zombies, corpses, mummies, ghosts, skulls sliced open like an egg and emptied by spoonfuls… The images follow one after the other, no two alike, but the editing organises a gradation towards the vampirism and an insidious passage from night to day, from dreams to real working life.

The history of barbed wire, whose use dates back to the first settlers of the Wild West, always driven by their reckless and ruthless spirit of conquest and selfish ambition to leave their mark on wild lands; of its relationship with politics and mercantilism; of the perversion of the millenary relationship between men and animals; of the evolution of surveillance techniques. Fences and borders: the tragic tale of the enclosure of the world.

The intersecting story of four notarial situations in a law office in Haute - Auvergne. Through the story of two negotiated sales, an inventory and an inheritance file, the notary's office becomes the reign of stories of property and money, of intimate conversations and secret exchanges, in short of the human comedy.