Aurélien Vernhes-Lermusiaux

Fleeing the June 1940 arrival of Hitler's army in Paris, a young war widow and her two children are rescued from dive-bombing German fighters by a cocky, reckless teenager. He finds them refuge in an abandoned house, but despite the fact that the family quickly comes to be depending much on his cunning and survival abilities, their cohabitation proves uneasy.

Santa Claus tries to outrun a gang of knife-wielding youth. It's one of several vignettes of Palestinian life in Israel - in a neighborhood in Nazareth and at Al-Ram checkpoint in East Jerusalem. Most of the stories are droll, some absurd, one is mythic and fanciful; few words are spoken. A man who goes through his mail methodically each morning has a heart attack. His son visits him in the hospital. The son regularly meets a woman at Al-Ram; they sit in a car, hands caressing. Once, she defies Israeli guards at the checkpoint; later, ninja-like, she takes on soldiers at a target range. A red balloon floats free overhead. Neighbors toss garbage over walls. Life goes on until it doesn't.

Adelaide and her two children Jean and Sacha spend a few days together in the mountains. As she takes her family on lengthy hikes, she is hoping for them to discover the trace of a hidden memory.

She is almost deaf and she lip-reads. He is an ex-convict. She wants to help him. He thinks no one can help except himself.

After years of absence, Ciro returns home to his mother's bedside. In the Colombian desert of Tatacoa, he meets those he fled and confronts the last guardians of a territory as fragile as it is enchanting.

The Hoffmann's are a famous couple of photographers. They are called to Berlin to shoot a significant commissioned series, but this work will not proceed as planned.

The story unfolds around the year 1860. Louis, a photographer, convinces the general of the French Army to send him to Mexico to photograph the colonial war that is ravaging the country. Once he is there, nothing goes as planned. Never in the right place at the right time to see the battles, Louis can't snap a single picture of the war. But his encounter with Pinto, a Mexican peasant, changes his destiny. It leads him to discover neither glory nor wealth, but a way to confront the ghosts of his past.

Fascination can drive us to take surprising action. In this same, perhaps illogical manner, I wanted, for my part, to return to the origins of "Zabriskie Point", the film by the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Can we rediscover in reality the meanings lost in fictions ? How does one belong, body and soul, to a work of this nature? To these questions, I set out to find an answer. Accompanied by my camera, I put into images this long voyage that would offer me the best, as well as the worst.