Olivier Derousseau

It’s firstly the portrait of an area, France’s north coast between Dunkirk and Calais, where Olivier Derousseau lives and works: ransacked landscapes, port installations, plumes of smoke from the chimneys of petrochemical facilities, blown by the wind… It’s also a musical suite in five parts, a kind of minimalist blues lovingly composed in memory of time and people that have disappeared: the constant bass of juggernauts on the motorway, the percussion of the wind in the microphones, all the world’s sounds blending into a repetitive guitar thread. And it’s a melancholy meditation on the stuff of days, the flesh of the future, on irretrievable erasure and the traces waiting and hoping to be saved.

In Algiers, in June 1957, Maurice Audin, a 25-year-old mathematician, was arrested by French paratroopers. His wife, Josette, and their three children never saw him again. This documentary interweaves testimonies from French and Algerian protagonists: activists for Algerian independence, lawyers, historians, and military personnel. Drawing on the research of historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet, it blends archival footage, newspaper articles, books, drawings, and reenactments to reconstruct the context of this disappearance and denounce the torture and murder practiced in Algeria. Josette Audin is the central figure and the moral compass of this film.